Business

BIG FOREST: The courtship of Sierra Nevada

Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. in Mills River. [PHOTO BY PAULA ROBERTS]

By Bill Moss, Published: April 7, 2014

PART 3: 'Oh, you're going to have visitors?'

Bill Lapsley, the principle engineer of W.G. Lapsley and Associates, has been involved in many of the major developments in Henderson County for 40 years. As the engineer for the Ferncliff property owner, Vaughan Fitzpatrick, Lapsley had worked with Fitzpatrick, Tate and Bill Moyer, the former chairman of the county Board of Commissioners, to turn the site into a prospective industrial site. When he got the call from Tate, Lapsley was ready to show the property to the client. He explained the water, sewer and road availability, described the lay of the land, how graders could move dirt. He still didn't know the identity of the client. But Schjeldahl wanted to start running numbers.
Bill Lapsley talks about engineering work for a company code named Big Forest."At this point I don't know what's inside the building. All I know is the number of employees, water supply, sewer discharge," Lapsley said. The client wanted to "develop a budget for site improvement."
It's not just a factory.
"We're going to have visitors," Schjeldahl told Lapsley.
"'Oh, you're going to have visitors?' 'Yeah, a lot of visitors.' 'Why do they need to come?' 'You don't need to know that yet. We're going to have a lot of visitors.'"
It's not known just how many people a fully developed brewery campus might attract. The covenants of the property list permitted uses including a restaurant, tours, gardens, beer camp, a conference center, special events, walking trails, bike trails, visitor center and canoe and kayak docks. Estimates of visits per year have ranged from 200,000 to 500,000. (The Biltmore estate attracts nearly 1 million visitors a year.)
Cooper, the co-manager of the Mills River plant, was asked about the tourism potential at a Mills River Town Board meeting last April. He could not say. But of one thing he was sure.
"It will be a showcase brewery for the world, I know that for a fact already," he said.