Highland Brewing Co.

Many breweries were birthed in basements. But only Oscar Wong moved his from the basement to a movie studio soundstage, more than quadrupling his workspace and growing into the largest craft brewery in the Carolinas (for now, anyway). Highland Brewing Co. now encompasses 70,000 square-feet on the eastern edge of Asheville, N.C., quite a step up from the 3,500 square-feet in the downtown basement under Barley’s Pizzeria & Taproom, where he and John McDermott started the brewery in 1994.

Born in Jamaica in 1940, Wong, who admits to brewing some “barely drinkable beer” in college, decided to pursue the brewery dream after 27 years as a civil engineer, the field in which earned his master’s degree at Notre Dame.

When the brewery outgrew the basement, Wong began searching for more space. “Originally, we thought about buying a piece of property east of the city, and when we figured out that the cost of utilities and gas, water, electricity, just to get those utilities to the new building were going to be a huge investment … we backed off from that,” Wong says.

All along, a vision of growth has guided the design of the space, part of a complex that encompasses more than 170,000 square-feet under one roof on 40 acres of rural property. Highland initially leased 20,000 square-feet, which had been the soundstage for Blue Ridge Motion Pictures. The studio still had operations in another part of the building at the time.

Robert Todd, architect and owner of Asheville firm Red House Architecture Inc., spearheaded the conversion of the industrial space into a brewery. He remembers when he first saw the building in 2006. “It was just this huge space,” he recalls. “I just saw long-term potential.”

The soundstage area became the home of Highland. Next to it was a shuttered textile plant that had once manufactured velour. “It was very raw, industrial space. No one had touched it,” Todd says. “On the one hand, you had this space that was perfect for a brewery, then you had the other space that had a leaking roof. It was dark and dingy. You had two completely different spaces, but they were all a part of what Oscar was planning.”

Wong says that despite the challenges, the metal-and-brick-clad building was the perfect spot for his vision. “It’s right next to the interstates,” he says. “The facilities were all there—the gas, the water, the electricity—because it had been a manufacturing operation, so it was well worth it. Everything kind of fit.

“Of course, we spent a lot of money on fixing up the areas piecemeal to make it work for us. We were trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

Wong says there were code issues and environmental concerns to deal with because of the building’s past uses. Besides the velour factory and the movie studios, the Southern Railway Wheelhouse fixed and refurbished locomotive wheels there. The Wheelhouse sign still adorns the outside.

Insulation was added, and areas were opened up to let in more natural light. A “legal moonshine” distillery, Troy & Sons, opened next to the brewery in 2010, in a space also designed by Todd. Highland’s 12,000-square-foot, family-friendly tasting room and concert venue also opened in 2010, in the former velour factory, and Highland incorporated imaginative uses of existing materials for it.

Some cargo containers (the big metal boxes you see stacked on freighters) were brought in and rehabbed to create additional office space; each one has windows, flooring, electric and sprinklers. Wood milled from a tree blown down in a storm is the bar top. They also built an outdoor tasting deck, and in 2011, an outdoor stage. And there’s still room to grow. ■