New Belgium to expand Fort Collins HQ

FORT COLLINS — New Belgium Brewing Co. will break ground Monday on expansion of its office space, tasting room and beer garden at its Fort Collins headquarters, the brewery announced today. The $7 million project also will include addition of an onsite health-care facility for workers and their families.

The additional 13,400 square feet of office space will allow staffers who have been working offsite in temporary rented space to move back into the employee-owned brewery’s main facility at 500 Linden St. The “Liquid Center” tasting room will grow by 1,600 square feet to accommodate an increased number of visitors. The current front parking lot will be developed into a grassy lawn and beer garden.

“We’ve been adding positions at a steady clip for many years now, and we’ve reached the point where we want to get all our Fort Collins folks back on campus,” said New Belgium spokesman Bryan Simpson in a media statement. “We saw this construction as an opportunity to grow out the tasting room and further develop our beer garden as a world-class tasting experience.”

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About 400 of the brewery’s 650 employees work at the Fort Collins headquarters.

The 1,500-square-foot onsite health care clinic will be for workers and their families only and will be staffed by New Belgium’s in-house physician and a medical assistant. They will not see outside patients, the brewery said.

Fort Collins-based Brinkman Construction is the general contractor for the expansion work, which is forecast to be completed by June.

New Belgium is working with the city of Fort Collins to widen Buckingham Street  between First and Third streets. That work is scheduled to begin Oct. 5 and should wrap by Nov. 17, the brewery said. Buckingham is scheduled to be closed to traffic from Oct. 30 through Nov. 2. Traffic for New Belgium will be directed away from the Buckingham neighborhood throughout the process, and brewery parking will be located behind  the Matrix at the northwest corner of Linden and Buckingham. New Belgium will post construction updates here.