Blue Point Brewing

Adaptive reuse helps craft an experiential brewery

Blue Point Brewing Company was established in 1998 as one of Long Island, New York’s first craft breweries. After nearly two decades in its original location, a cluster of small marina warehouses in the village of Patchogue, they had outgrown the space and needed to relocate. SEA collaborated with Blue Point to renovate a former department store into a state-of-the-art experiential brewery and company headquarters. The design stays true to our client’s marina origins while also providing the operations and hospitality infrastructure needed for their expanded business.

Client
Blue Point Brewing

Location
Patchogue, NY

Size
65,000 sf

Year
2019

blue point brewing, brewery, brewery design

SEA worked with Blue Point to develop a vision for their full-scale experiential production brewery. The decision to adaptively reuse a former department store was inspired by their desire to stay in Patchogue and contribute to a community they love. By revitalizing the existing 100,000 sf building we were able to build a cultural anchor point for the village’s west end.

The site has a rich history. The department store was built on the site after a lace curtain manufacturing mill built in the 1850s (pictured in the above newspaper clipping, middle-bottom) was destroyed in a fire. The iconic clock tower from the mill was rebuilt with the department store and we used some of the original bricks in the new tasting room.

People waiting at bar with blue siding and copper lighting above — Salvaged industrial lighting and repurposed relics from Blue Point’s past are integrated into the interior design. One notable piece is a refinished 19th-century copper kettle top suspended over the bar as a chandelier.

The size of the building also allowed our team to incorporate a significant project program that included Blue Point’s administrative headquarters, beer production and distribution, a brewer’s lab, a private tasting room, and a restaurant. The restaurant is perched on the mezzanine above the brewery and office functions. This approach optimized the efficiencies demanded of the brewery by maximizing the ground floor area for industrial production and operations.

New exterior overhead doors at the restaurant level provide natural ventilation and capitalize on the mezzanine’s height with a view over Patchogue Lake and a visual connection to the outdoor beer garden below.

Man at bottle station in factory — Large glass windows show the production and canning line on the first floor.

Exterior entry at night. Faux beach with tables.

The brewery’s original marina location inspired design choices and materiality. An old loading dock is adapted into the public building entrance with a new wood slipway floating over a gravel “beach”. As an installation art piece, steel cages brimming with cured oyster shells were fabricated in partnership with the local non-profit Billion Oyster Project, an organization that is working to reseed oyster reefs in the New York area.