Plans for brewery dry up

Lack of investor interest has thrown a wet bar rag over a local investor's plan to open a regional craft brewery near Bellefonte's Tallyrand Park.

Ed Lauth and Pool Financial Group were to be the principle owners of Historic Bellefonte Brewery Inc.. Lauth announced last week he would not be able to raise enough capital to purchase the required $7.5 million in brewery equipment and cover other renovation expenses.

"Basically what happened is that I could not convince a group of people to put up $12.5 million to compete with the likes of Coors, Miller and Anheuser-Busch," he said. "I want to make it clear that I am not blaming anyone."

The brewery would have been a mid-sized operation, larger than brew pubs, which sell all their beer in an adjacent restaurant, but smaller than the brewing giants like Adolph Coors Company.

Investors may have been scared off by how other specialty beer companies' stocks have been doing, said Michael D. Graham, the man who would have served as the company's president.

"They are all trading at about half their offering price," he said. "The start-up expenses are enormous."

An operation as large as the proposed brewery, Graham said, would need to raise most of its capital outside the area. Local enthusiasm, while appreciated, would not do the trick, he said.

"The people here in Bellefonte, the mayor, the borough, the historic review commission, they all could not have been more helpful," he said. "That just could not be enough, though."

That enthusiasm might have come too late, said Gloria Horner, executive director of the Bellefonte Intervalley Area Chamber of Commerce.

"The disappointment for me is not the fact that it did not happen, but the people who have come to me since the news broke and told me, 'I was going to invest in that,' " she said. "If those people would have invested then, it would have happened."

Even with the brewery tapped out, Horner said, Bellefonte should get a new business on the site. The site used to be a match factory and, more recently, a Claster's Building Materials yard.

Lauth has already bought the site and said he has been contacted by several prospective tenants.

The site, with its historic brick buildings, central location and -- most importantly -- abundance of spring water, is still a perfect place to make beer, Graham said.

"It would be a good place for a brew pub or a micro(brewery)," he said. "But I know (Lauth) did not want to get into that."

Whatever happens on the site, Graham will not be involved, he said. The career brewer, most recently with Pittsburgh Brewing Co., is hanging up his hops.

"After 20 years, at last I will not be in the beer or beverage industry," he said. "It is kind of exciting, a new challenge. I have been in this business so long, you tend to deal with the same problems every day."

As for Lauth, the national representative and founder of AquaPenn Spring Water, said he is busy with that growing business. The brewery, he said, was a great idea that just did not work out.

"I have done better on other projects," he said. "Let's just put it that way."