Brooklyn Brewery building on sale for $50 million

The pace of change in a city eventually destroys most of, if not everything there that you once loved. For many examples of this, see our “In Memoriam” video from last year. One place we hadn’t had a thought of putting in a video like that anytime soon was Brooklyn Brewery, seeing as how it’s an internationally beloved brand that was slapping the Brooklyn name on their products long before those jokers the Nets came along. Well, now Crain’s is reporting that the building the brewery is housed in is on sale for $50 million, and given the trajectory of Williamsburg the last few years, we can’t imagine potential buyers are looking at it just to collect beer-based rent. Is it too late to make Brooklyn Brewery an official landmark?

According to Crain’s, 61-71 Wythe Avenue, better known as the building that houses Brooklyn Brewery and Brooklyn Bowl, has been put up for sale by its owner for $50 million. Before you start completely panicking and writing your death of Brooklyn thinkpieces, the real estate agent handling the sale, David Schechtman, told Crain’s that he told the two businesses that no one is coming in and kicking them out before their leases expire, which are in 2021 for Brooklyn Bowl and 2025 for Brooklyn Brewery.

On the other hand, the rest of the story just talks about how valuable the land is about to become thanks to a possible zoning change, the amount of building that can be done (100,000 square feet) on it if those pesky businesses that helped make Williamsburg so hot weren’t there, the office and hotel development going on around the building and oh yeah:

“The new owner of 61-71 Wythe Ave. may also buy Brooklyn Brewery and Brooklyn Bowl out of their leases in order to make way for a development sooner rather than later.”

Sure, the broker is promising Brooklyn Brewery and Brooklyn Bowl aren’t going anywhere, at least until their leases are up, but if we’ve learned anything from the last few years of Brooklyn real estate madness, it’s that landlords don’t care if something is fun or iconic, not if they can turn it into condos or an Apple store. Now we see why Brooklyn Brewery was looking to open a Staten Island outpost.