Tasting rooms bring economic benefits and safety concerns
It isn’t just about beer.
Eugene’s Whiteaker neighborhood, home of brewers Ninkasi, Oakshire and Hop Valley, also is home to meadery Blue Dog Mead; Eugene Wine Cellars and Territorial Vineyards & Wine Co., two pioneer urban wineries that set up shop in the Whiteaker more than a decade ago; and newcomers Oregon Wine Lab and Capitello Wines, which plan to open by Thanksgiving.
On the outskirts of Whiteaker are the recently opened Falling Sky Pour House Delicatessen, a brew pub-deli combo, and The Growler Guys, a growler fill station, which plans to open soon at the base of the Washington-Jefferson Street bridge.
And there are likely more to come. More producers are looking for space in or near the city’s oldest and funkiest neighborhood, which is about a mile northwest of downtown and hugs the Willamette River from Skinner Butte to Chambers Street.
Cider maker 2 Towns Ciderhouse has been looking for a location in the Whiteaker for the past couple of years, said Aaron Sarnoff-Wood, one of the cider house founders.
“Ever since our opening we have wanted to have a brick-and-mortar presence in Eugene as well as Corvallis,” which are the two towns in the company’s name, he said.
“Whiteaker is the epicenter of the Eugene brewing community and it’s also been a great community for alternative business,” Sarnoff-Wood said. “It’s a really great, supportive community that has similar values to our company, so it seems like a pretty natural home if we’re able to make it work.”
A distillery also wants to move in, according to “word around the campfires,” said Alan Mitchell, a Territorial Vineyards owner.
Figuring that visitors could use some help finding all the different stops in Eugene’s emerging “Fermentation District,” the producers are creating a map that’s due out by Thanksgiving.
“I saw so much going on,” said Mitchell, who organized the map project. Ninkasi’s designers are producing it.
“I started by talking to other wineries and asked what they thought about having a map, a brochure, in all the tasting rooms,” he said. “That’s just sort of a first step and I don’t know if it will go further than that.”
With this “critical mass” of beer and wine producers in the neighborhood, “the more of us there are down there, the more of a destination it becomes,” Mitchell said.
“We’re just trying to facilitate that as a fermentation destination. A lot of people will come to our place and have no idea there’s another winery two blocks away, no idea there are three breweries right there, and likewise people are coming into other tasting rooms and they’ve never heard of us.
“I think it will be of mutual benefit to make people aware of the other stuff that’s just right around the corner.”
The concentration of wine and beer producers presents opportunities to raise the area’s profile and draw visitors. But it also poses challenges, such as more traffic, parking problems and drunk people, neighbors say.
“Most people I speak with are happy the neighborhood is getting some revitalization, happy that the attention is turning to the neighborhood we already loved,” said Helen Shepard, former chairwoman of Willamette Community Council, the neighborhood association. “Many of us love beer. Most of all, we are happy for the local employment.”
“But there are definitely concerns,” she said, and drunk people is a big one.
“Drunk driving is dangerous, and people exiting bars are loud,” Shepard said. “Neighbors have noticed an increase in obnoxious drunk behavior, which makes them feel unsafe and/or annoyed in their own neighborhood.”
Most of the tasting rooms close by 10 p.m., so it’s possible that people start out there and then move on to the bars, she said.
Research shows that increased density of alcohol outlets in an area leads to increased consumption and a rise in the negative effects of consumption, such as crime, abuse, dependence, binge drinking and underage drinking, said Lindsey Adkisson, prevention specialist with Lane County Public Health.
As the Whiteaker builds a reputation as a place to enjoy craft beer and local wines, producers say they’re trying to be sensitive to their neighbors’ concerns about parking and traffic.
They’re also working with Lane County public health officials to try to encourage responsible drinking in a county whose rate of alcohol-related deaths is twice the national average.
A task force including Adkisson, representatives from Ninkasi, Oakshire and Hop Valley, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, and the Whiteaker Community Council recently met to discuss strategies to reduce binge drinking and other negative impacts of alcohol consumption. The group plans to meet quarterly.
“There is this excitement around getting more people to our community and we want more people in our community and more business,” she said. “But we also want to make sure that we’re doing what we can do to maintain a healthy community. It’s a balance.
“So far working with the breweries has been wonderful, and they’ve been very responsive to promoting that health view and safety view,” Adkisson said.
Concrete strategies have yet to be developed, but owners at all three breweries advocate communicating to the other tasting rooms when a party has been cut off in one tasting room and is getting ready to move onto another brewery.
“We don’t encourage roving parties,” said Jeff Althouse, Oakshire’s general manager. “We’re not interested in having a party of folks going from our place to Hop Valley and to Ninkasi with the purpose of drinking at each place. We don’t want to encourage overconsumption, so we’ll communicate with other breweries if we see that behavior.”
Oakshire has already done that since opening its public house in the Whiteaker in May, Althouse said, adding that it doesn’t happen very often.
Owners at all three breweries said they place the utmost importance on the neighborhood’s liveability.
A resident of the Whiteaker since 2005, Althouse said that’s his biggest concern.
“We want to make sure that as the commercial side of the neighborhood develops that we’re cognizant that people live and have their residences there,” he said.
Althouse said the breweries can help with that by being careful with how they promote the neighborhood.
“We don’t want to promote the Whiteaker as a drinking neighborhood,” he said. “We want to promote it as a great mixed-use neighborhood, which is a great place to have a meal, have a drink, bring your family and be part of the community.”
Until this year, when Oakshire and Hop Valley both opened facilities in the Whiteaker, Ninkasi was the neighborhood’s sole brewer. Ninkasi moved to Van Buren Street in 2007. It’s in the midst of a $23 million expansion, which will add a brewing facility, offices, warehouse, cold storage and local distribution facility on nearby Blair Boulevard.
“It’s kind of a crossroads because for a while we were the only brewery here,” Ninkasi CEO Nikos Ridge said. “Now there are more moving in. It’s good to have the dialogue before there are problems instead of after, and to promote it in a positive way.”
The breweries and wineries have helped bring jobs, vitality and visibility to The Whiteaker.
“There’s a lot of jobs that weren’t here before,” said Brad Foster, chairman of the Whiteaker Community Council. “They kind of made them out of nothing.”
These businesses are “transforming the neighborhood in ways that’s increasing the vitality,” said Bob Parker, who directs the Community Planning Workshop, part of a research center affiliated with the University of Oregon’s Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management. “It’s bringing more people down there. It’s got a cool factor that enhances the neighborhood sense of place.”
Visitors from other parts of town and from out of town are finding their way to the Whiteaker, and “we’re sending more people there,” said Kari Westlund, president and CEO of Travel Lane County.
“We are so proud for that neighborhood,” she said. “They’ve created something really special there.
“They’ve had a pretty good food and beverage and live music scene for quite a while. They’ve got great bakeries, restaurants and now the breweries really provide some great anchors of size and scope and economic power to drive some marketing initiatives.
“I think the Whiteaker is coming of age and is crafting its own persona rather than having anyone else crafting that … for them,” Westlund said.
By Sherri Buri McDonald, The Register-Guard
Published: 12:00 a.m., Aug. 11