Due mostly to its multi-phase nature, Mike Hess Brewing’s Imperial Beach satellite venue is one of San Diego County’s longest-running brewery-owned venue projects. The sprawling spot, which goes by the name Mike’s Yard, was announced in July of 2017, but it wasn’t until March of 2019 that it opened. At that point, it was rather scant, with a 1,650-square-foot tasting room offering house beers and food from onsite vendor, City Tacos, plus limited outdoor seating with a view of the remaining 3,000 square feet of space that would eventually include a two-story structure built out of revamped shipping containers with its own bar and a mezzanine overlooking Seacoast Drive and an outdoor beer garden. At the end of 2019, with that project less than halfway complete, the company announced yet another satellite project, a kitchen- and patio-equipped tasting room within downtown’s Seaport Village development. It was a lot to have going on at one time, but a recent check-in with the brewery’s eponymous owner turns up two projects nearing the finish line.
“In Imperial Beach, we have passed final inspection and gotten our occupancy certificate. The only tick-list items left are the installation of a window on the north side of our satellite shipping-container bar,” says Mike Hess. “And eventually, post-COVID, we’ll replace the picnic tables we’re currently using with proper biergarten-style furniture, as well.”
Maintaining a construction schedule on a project as ambitious as the Imperial Beach tasting room would have been difficult on its own. Doing so while open to the public added another wrinkle, but that was nothing compared to the challenges brought about by the coronavirus. Hess says that, even with the accommodation and support of the City of Imperial Beach, which included allowing street-side seating during the pandemic despite construction operations, things were tough. The hardest part for him? “We have a decent-sized staff of about 30 at our IB spot. Constantly pushing and pulling them onto and off of unemployment has just been mentally exhausting and frustrating, but our crew has remained an example of the can-do attitude that we lead with.”
Hess believes that attitude was the driving force to the success he and his team had GCing the IB project. “Proper planning and thoughtfulness led to a killer design, built below-budget and above standards,” he says. “We learned to stick to our guns. There were a lot of people who just didn’t have the same vision as we did when we’d describe what we wanted to build. They didn’t like it or didn’t understand it. Now that we have built it, all we hear is how awesome it came out. And they’re correct. It is a remarkable venue, and it looks substantially like I envisioned it when it was just decomposed granite and pop-up tents.”
Of most concern to those who harbored doubt were the high sail cloths shading the beer garden and the shipping container entrance. The former are held up by a set of 13 eight-to-ten-inch posts that rise 14-to-24 feet above the ground and are meant to resemble masts on a sailing ship.
Twelve miles north in Seaport Village, demolition is mostly complete inside the 1,000-square foot space where 23 handles of beer from Mike Hess and guest breweries (plus ciders, kombucha and house-made sodas) will be available along with a menu from Quiero Tacos. The project started slowly due to a COVID-decelerated 10-month delay getting city permits approved, but fast work is being made of the new location’s pièce de résistance, an outdoor patio abutting the development’s seaside boardwalk and looking across San Diego Bay to Coronado. That al fresco space will seat roughly 75 guests.
Hess, who is personally managing the construction, says building during the varying degrees of lockdowns has made it hard to pinpoint the opening of the Seaport Village venue but they are currently targeting St. Patrick’s Day for its public debut. Managing cash-flow during uncertain times and trying to stretch the first of two tenant-improvement payments from the Unified Port of San Diego has kept things interesting, but once it’s open, he and his team have big plans for the patio area, including live music, DJs, and, come game days, a “gigantic” television screen that will be put to use during Padres games. The hope is that fans will be donning brown-and-gold at the new spot while drinking beverages matching those colors in time for Opening Day on April 1.
Back in IB, he would like to do things up big, but wants to wait until conditions are right for a grand-scale celebration. “Once the public is ready for it, we hope to host a massive street party like our annual HessFest in North Park,” he says. “We’ll have bands, jump houses, a dog park and cornhole, plus, of course, lots of beer, handcrafted sodas and tacos. And a thousand or two of our friends.”
Mike Hess Brewing’s Mike’s Yard tasting room is located at 805 Ocean Lane in Imperial Beach; and its upcoming Seaport Village tasting room will be located at 879 West Harbor Drive, Suite W14-E, in the Marina District