Brewery, Distillery, Restaurant and Public Market Planned for Barrio Logan

The once-promising site of a public market project in Barrio Logan is in the process finally being activated thanks to a brewery with roots in North Park. Established in 2012 by Dennis O’Connor in his former homebrew shop, Thorn Street Brewery is embarking on an ambitious collection of concepts that includes a large-scale production brewery at 1735 National Avenue that will be paired with other new food and drink options for the community.

O’Connor told Eater that Thorn Street Brewery’s ownership, which includes co-founders Dan Carrico and Eric O’Connor who is also Thorn’s brew master, had been exclusively looking at Barrio Logan and the Sports Arena area for expansion. Focused now on extending the brewery’s capacity rather that multiplying into many satellites, Thorn Street Brewery is dedicating one of its new 10,500-square-foot warehouses just to beer. A new 30 barrel system, which can scale up to produce 30,000 barrels a year, should have beer in its floor to ceiling tanks in just a few weeks; O’Connor says that the brewery recently signed with Stone Distributing Company to grow the market reach of their beers, which will soon be available in cans. There will also be small 750-square-foot tasting room attached, that should be pouring by this summer.

Next year in the adjacent equally-sized space, the brewery is branching out into a distillery, Thorn Spirits, since it will be conveniently making the bases for many spirits just next door. O’Connor shared that they also have plans for a full-service restaurant, along with a curated marketplace of in-house vendors in a setup similar to the Liberty Public Market or the collection of shops that share the same space at James Coffee in Little Italy. The seating for the second space would include a massive 6,000-square-foot deck that will boast views of Petco Park and the Coronado bridge.