Two-story expansion will offer housing above popular downtown Pensacola brewery
The downtown Pensacola building that currently houses The 5 Barrel brewery and taproom and Cask & Flights Wine Tasting Room may be expanded to include 24 residential units.
The Architectural Review Board has allowed the developers to move ahead with plans of adding two additional stories to accommodate potential short-term rental and long-term residential elements to the site.
The façade of the building at 121 S. Palafox St. would change significantly with large windows along the frontage and historical style railings on the upper floors.
The development came before the ARB in February 2020 with a plan to add a second floor for residential, but in further planning, architect Scott Sallis said the development team has since shifted plans to add another level.
"The biggest difference of course is a third level has been added," he said. "This is a very rare building in the downtown core that has an existing structure in place in the ground that can take these loads up to a third floor."
Under the conceptual plans, businesses would stay in place along Palafox frontage on the ground floor, but the rear of the building would house studio through two-bedroom sized residential units. The second floor would have another 14 units between about 650 and 1,500 square feet in size, and the third floor would have another 10 units that are between 860 square feet and 2,787 square feet.
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Sallis said the plan was initially to build another restaurant space on the second floor but that plan has since changed to offer only residential — both short-term and long-term — on the upper two floors.
Renderings show the rear of the building would also undergo a big overhaul and would be where elements like parking and the rental units' access would be located, off Palafox Street.
The ARB unanimously approved Sallis’ team moving ahead with more final designs of the development which will again come before the ARB. There is not yet a timeline for the development.
"This is a very exciting project, it was very exciting whenever you brought it to us with two stories. ... It's going to be a great improvement to downtown Pensacola and I think you're doing a fine job with it," ARB member Derek Salter said.
The building is the second Palafox Street site up for ARB approval in recent months, following a decision earlier this month not to allow the old Dollarhide's Music Store building to be demolished without a replacement plan in place.
In that development, owner Bobby Switzer wanted to demolish the building due to structural issues inside and use the space as a holding yard for other construction happening at Switzer's One Palafox Place development on the same city block. The ARB — and then the City Council on appeal earlier this month — denied the demolition due to not having at least a conceptual plan in place for what would come next in the space.
Emma Kennedy can be reached at ekennedy@pnj.com or 850-480-6979.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Palafox building expansion to offer housing above Pensacola brewery
