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<\/a>What do you feel were some key take-away points from yesterday\u2019s economic summit<\/a>?<\/b> The more relevant takeaway, in my opinion, was who was hearing the pitch this time. The summit attendees were really the people who, like it or hate it, make all the decisions in this town. Former mayor and now CEO of the regional Chamber of Commerce, Congressional candidate Carl DeMaio, Councilman Mark Kersey, tourism authority CEO Joe Terzi, councilmembers from Escondido and National City, folks from the regional Economic Development Council. So I think the fact that the conversation is now happening in front of the people who actually have the power to make the big change happen was probably the most important thing I saw yesterday. The summit still dealt with a lot of broad ideas and goals, and just making a basic sale of the concept, rather than saying \u201chere is a piece of policy that we could implement and help the industry, you powerful people should all go support it.\u201d But, getting the big idea in front of people outside the beer world is a big change (even if Sanders was somewhat involved with beer as mayor, and Mayor Bob Filner had put together a beer task force).<\/p>\n What current land use issues are breweries facing? Similarly, the conditional use permit process is a nightmare by all accounts. That type of permit basically lets business open in an area where they otherwise wouldn\u2019t be able to, but there\u2019s a public process that lets the community impose some conditions on the operation. It makes sense to let the community have a say in what\u2019s going on in their neighborhood, but businesses avoid the prospect at all costs because it\u2019s so uncertain and can really delay their plans. Ballast Point ended up opening a restaurant in Little Italy rather than just a tasting room because it allowed them to avoid the process. Improving that process to bring a bit more certainty to the equation, while still letting the community play a role, would really help. This one is especially important now, as interest in the beer world grows and new converts might be more interested in a brewery near where they work and live, rather than out in the industrial parks of Mira Mesa where many breweries I\u2019ve always gone to have always been. But, again, improving this wouldn\u2019t just help breweries. It\u2019s really a broad land use issue that would help breweries, and all kinds of other things also.<\/p>\n Where does San Diego rank in terms of population per brewery?
\n<\/b>Everyone made important points about making San Diego beer an inextricable part of the city\u2019s identity. Imploring event planners behind things like the Rock and Roll Marathon or a small community festival that it\u2019s to their benefit to turn down a potentially more lucrative sponsorship from Anheuser Busch, because people will have a more memorable time and would be likely to return if they\u2019re drinking good beer and having a good time. That\u2019s important, and true, but it\u2019s also something that I think most brewery owners and craft beer fans have also heard and thought many times over.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/a>
\n<\/b>It seems to me the land use issues facing breweries are the same ones facing the city as a whole. One big one, and Jacob McKean at Modern Times has really been beating this drum, is that there just aren’t many acceptable industrial properties within the central core area of the city of San Diego. That\u2019s the type of thing that isn\u2019t solved simply, but changes to zoning could play a role, as could just making the city\u2019s development services department more efficient. Builders constantly complain about how time consuming and expensive it is to get approval to build anything. Assuming you believe all the anecdotes out there are true\u2014and I\u2019ve tried to establish it with data, which is a whole other nightmare\u2014that\u2019s one thing the city could fix and see improved conditions for all sorts of things, including the brewing industry.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/a>
\n<\/b>So the Brewers Association releases a yearly list ranking all the states in how many people there are for every brewery. It\u2019s sort of useful, but it also skews things in favor of places like Montana and Alaska and Wyoming, that just have very small populations. I took the list and just did a really simple calculation of San Diego\u2019s breweries<\/a>\u2014using West Coaster<\/em>\u2019s ongoing count<\/a>, obviously\u2014and divided it by the 2010 census count for San Diego County. San Diego County comes in ninth if you just plug it into the state list, with one brewery for every 42,933 people. In fairness, if I\u2019m pointing out that the list skews in favor of places with a low population, I should also add that it\u2019s not really a fair comparison to put San Diego County, which is a predominantly developed area with a huge city in it, and compare it to entire states that have massive, unpopulated areas. Obviously if I added Imperial County to San Diego and redid the ranking, we\u2019d come out looking worse. But I really just wanted to put in context how many breweries are here, and get a rough sense of what\u2019s going on elsewhere, and I think it basically confirmed what I imagine most of your readers already knew: there are a lot of breweries in San Diego, but there\u2019s also some cool stuff happening in Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Vermont, etc.<\/p>\n