Check out these renderings of the Greenbar Collective's new distillery. I profiled Litty Mathew and Melkon Khosrovian's little organic spirits company two New Year's Eves ago; at that time, I got to visit their place, in a nondescript strip mall in Monrovia. Greenbar makes Crusoe Rum, Tru Vodka, bitters, Fruitlab liqueurs...pretty much everything I needed to invent my signature backyard cocktail, the Manzanita Sunset.
Faced with eviction from that nondescript strip mall, thanks to the Red Line (something they were talking about even back in the day when I visited), Greenbar bought a place at 2459 E. Eighth St., on the edge of downtown L.A. And according to Mathew, the distillery is going to be the first resident of the city's Clean Tech Corridor. (Which, if you refer to the city's website, is "the cornerstone of the Mayor’s vision to put Los Angeles at the forefront of the clean tech revolution and to transform the old, downtown industrial core into an incubator for green jobs, technology and the growth of LA’s economy.")
The city of LA is giving the project a little boost. According to agenda items from the CRA's website, it appears the CRA decided last June that the city of LA would loan Greenbar $250,000 for equipment in the new facility as part of the Industrial Incentive Program, under which they give money to projects when the owners can't get financing on the private market. The money will pay for the kind of stuff you want to see in a distillery: "grain mill, grain elevator, boiler, fermentation tanks, infusion chambers, a bottling line, a storage racking system, and other equipment associated with the distillation of spirits." CRA staff's writeup of the project indicates they expect 18 people working at that site within two years.
You might remember that the company has made it part of their marketing campaign to offset one bottle of booze with one tree planted in an accredited American forest. (So far, they're at 153,000+ trees, according to their site.) Those of you not giving up weekday drinking for Lent are free to hoist a fresh (organic) cocktail now.
