Since debuting in 2016, Pure Project Brewing has been one of the San Diego beer industry’s success stories. They’ve earned fans behind continually rotating beers, a charity-minded ethos and a design aesthetic centered around nature and its various resources. All of that will be on display in great quantity when the Miramar-based interest opens its first satellite tasting room—Pure at the Park—in Banker’s Hill during a grand-opening weekend, August 2 to 4.
A literal cornerstone for the newly-constructed The Park, Bankers Hill building at 2865 Fifth Avenue, the 2,000-square-foot venue features two bars on either side of an L-shaped floorplan. A maximum of 20 Pure Project beers are available at a time, along with bottled beers. The latter is available in a convenient to-go area outfitted with a crowler machine, beer-to-go, apparel and other merchandise items. It is but one of the spaces many thoughtful design elements.
“Since it’s a higher-end space, we wanted to go with higher-end materials, but still make it feel like Pure Project,” says co-founder Mat Robar. “The way we did that was going with a lot of blending of materials.”
A key example are winding, wooden tree branches outfitted with LED light fixtures that cover most of the ceiling and are anchored into concrete pillars. Robar and his colleagues saw no point in appointing those load-bearing cylinders to look like trees when everybody—themselves included—would know full well they were fake.
Similarly, bar-tops are constructed from a blend of a white, hard-surfaced, Quartz-like material augmented by pieces of a felled Torrey pine. That ultra-rare piece of building material was procured from a private lot adjacent to the Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve. It makes its way into other tasting-room components including a 13-foot-long table with a turquoise ribbon of resin, blown with an air compressor during the cooling process to look like a stream running down its middle. Hanging plants, a copper-accented watering can, wooden tap handles and faux-rock patio furniture further drive home Pure Project’s established thematic.
It took a bevy of craftspeople to bring the company’s vision to life. Construction was handled by local firm CLTVT, architecture was the charge of Tecscape Design, woodwork and fabrication were done by J3 Products Group, trees and lighting were installed by Fox & Flora, and tap handles came from nearby Barrio Logan operation Knotty Taps.
The Bankers Hill tasting room is one of two Pure Project currently has in the works. It’s other in-progress venue-to-be is in Carlsbad. Dubbed Pure at the Village, it has received most of the sign-off needed for the company to begin work on it. All that remains is approval from Carlsbad’s City Council. That space will feature a large tree under which guests may enjoy their beer. An ETA for that spot has yet to be determined.
Pure at the Park will be open daily, 3 to 9 p.m on Mondays, 12 to 9 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 12-10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 12 to 8 p.m. on Sundays.