Charming 45,325 sq/ft brewery is the ideal spot for a mid-sized craft brewery looking to upgrade or an adventurous entrepreneur who loves beer and has more money than sense.
Gently used by a pioneering Toronto craft brewer who needs to vacate the space in a hurry thanks to a business offer they simply couldn’t refuse, this luxurious space on a 2.62 acre lot features roughly 20,195 sq/ft of new construction, a sunken living room and hardwood throughout. Steps to transit and the the shops of Scarborough Town Centre.
OK, the above listing isn’t real, but it’s pretty close to the interesting “property for lease” notice recently posted by global real estate firm Cushman and Wakefield.
Yes, the brewery at 300 Midwest Road in Scarborough, better known as the production facility of one Mill Street Brewery is currently up for lease.
As I’m sure most readers will know, this is just the latest development for Mill Street, who a few weeks ago were acquired by Labatt and their multi-national overlords, AB InBev.
Frankly, I’m not sure if this means production will shift to their soon-to-be-upgraded Distillery District brewery (which seems pretty much incapable of making the same volume as this facility), or if they are opening another facility elsewhere, but I hope it doesn’t mean that the bulk of the production of Mill Street’s beer will now occur at Labatt’s facilities.
This might not exactly be shocking news given that consolidation so often means eliminating redundancies, creating efficiencies, and doing other marketing buzzword-y type corporate things before doing cocaine in your Maseratti at lunch (that’s what I picture anyway), but if it means they’ll be brewing at Labatt now, the news will be perhaps a little disappointing to any holdout Mill Street fans who were encouraged by Mill Street’s message post-buyout that they would continue to operate independently despite their new owners. Hopefully we didn’t miss some subtext that ‘independently” actually meant “making beer in massive breweries owned by the biggest beer company in the world?”
UPDATE: I clearly don’t have a scoop here. More than a handful of beer folks have reached out to me since this post went up (literally minutes ago) to let me know that Mill Street is NOT going to start brewing at Labatt (some rightly pointed out it would be pretty much impossible to brew organic beer at a Labatt facility) and Mill Street does in fact have other plans. I now know what they are, but I’ll let someone else share them since I have acted like such a traffic-hungry jerk face. Sorry dudes.
UPDATE 2: Mill Street set the record straight. New brewery opening down the road. Sorry again I was a lazy on this one.
But hey maybe there’s a silver lining? While there’s nothing to say that the new tenants have to use the space as a brewery, all the zoning, hydro, and water needs would be in place so if someone were keen on opening a massive beer-making operation in Scarborough they could…
You can view a pdf flyer for the listing with complete details here.
Ben's Beer Blog 
This isn’t what I heard at all, did you ask Mill Street about this before speculating?
The only thing I know is that it’s for lease, and that’s all I’ve actually said above. You’ll notice that I’ve carefully preceded everything else with “presumably” or “it seems likely.” I have not heard from Mill Street on this. You got a scoop to share?
I figured it’d be announced soon enough, but you’ve motivated me ; ). I’ll see what I can do.
I’m happy my lazy journalism here can inspire someone else to get and share the full scoop. I sort of feel like taking this post down now, but I’ll leave it as penance for my lack of due diligence.
I heard Mill Street was going to be brewed on a big, orange boat.
There is an unsubstantiated rumour that the brewing equipment at said facility was going to be sold to another (unnamed) Toronto Brewery and that ABI promptly cancelled that contract (paying the huge penalties) and has decided to destroy the equipment rather than let anyone else use it.
Bonjour, So many rumours and speculation….this is a beer blahg
I like how you put the word “blah” into the word “blog.” Neat.