The former Sycamore Brewing reopened this past weekend in time for St. Patrick’s Day holiday. It has a new name, Club West Brewing, and is in the process of getting a new owner. Sycamore Brewing closed in early January, a few weeks after one of its co-founders was arrested on sex crime charges involving a 13-year-old girl. For more, Ashley Fahey of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: You’ve been covering this story since the beginning. What was the turnout like this past weekend when Club West debuted?
Ashley Fahey: Yeah, so Saturday afternoon, a lot of folks were out in Charlotte celebrating Saint Patrick's Day weekend. Club West Brewing looked just like it did back in its heyday as Sycamore. Patios were packed, the interior was wall-to-wall folks. The only obvious signs of change would be the new names on the beer menu and the new branding throughout, saying Club West instead of Sycamore, but it definitely looked like business as usual on its first day back.
Terry: Sycamore was one of the largest breweries in Charlotte when it closed earlier this year after the fallout from the arrest of co-founder Justin Brigham. Is Club West a different brewery, or is it Sycamore with just a new name? And do we know anything about how this deal came together or how much it's being sold for?
Fahey: The details of the deal, including the value of the transaction, aren't clear or public at this time. The intention is that the current owner, Sarah Taylor, the wife of Justin Brigham, who filed for divorce in January, she has said she is selling the brewery full out to Brad Bergman, who had been the director of brewery operations at Sycamore.
I think you could say a lot of what Club West is going to offer is going to resemble Sycamore. A lot of the recipes of the beers that they are selling at Club West have a lot of reminiscence of the Sycamore beers, including their flagship Mountain Candy IPA. But they are also making it clear that this is kind of a new era for the brewery. I'm curious to see how the sale, which is still pending regulatory approvals, how the Charlotte community will kind of react to the new Sycamore, for lack of a better term.
Terry: Over to uptown now, where you report the number of office towers that have sold at deep discounts in the past few years could be a wake-up call come tax revaluation time. How so?
Fahey: The reval isn't happening until 2027, but it's something that's already on a lot of folks' minds because so many uptown office towers have traded at really deep discounts even since the 2023 revaluation. Because so much of the tax revenue in the county and the city comes from the uptown commercial real estate market, I think this is going to be significant.
I looked at all the towers that have traded since 2023, and a number of them have sold for 50% or even more in some cases. That's going to show up for sure in the revaluation next year, and that's going to impact how much revenue local tax coffers get from commercial real estate. Some folks I spoke with said this is important to keep an eye on next year when we do see the revaluation and we might even see a few more deeply discounted office trades before that time, too.
Terry: Let’s switch over now to summer internships. You reported that the timelines for those internships at some of Charlotte’s biggest companies is shifting and that demand for a spot is up more than ever. It sounds like summer internships are harder to get into than college itself these days. What’s driving that?
Fahey: The war for talent really is even rippling out now to internships. It's not even just landing a job. We know the labor market's really challenging right now. This has always been true to an extent, getting an internship at Bank of America has always been very competitive. But timelines are moving up. Companies are looking to lock in summer 2027 interns by the end of this month. That's over a year out. Thousands of applicants are applying for usually what's just a couple of dozen positions at some of these companies. So it's definitely become a lot more fierce, and I think that just speaks to how tight the labor market has gotten overall.
Support for BizWorthy comes from the law office of Robertson & Associates.
