NEW GLARUS — A Green County hilltop attraction is getting a $55 million addition — and it’s not just for tourists. New Glarus Brewing Co. broke ground Oct. 29 on a new 65,000-square foot brewing, distilling and hospitality addition for the Hilltop facility on the south side of the village.

Architect Katherine May, daughter of New Glarus Brewery founders Dan and Deb Carey, said her plans for the facility will make it “a beacon on top of the hill.”

The planning and design of the new visitor center addition took almost two years. The expanded facility will house a historic ten-hectoliter brew hall with coolship, according to a press release. The main brew hall will double with four additional copper kettles and a distillery (Sugar River Distillery) for spirits. Parking at the Hilltop location will nearly quadruple to 183 stalls, allowing the brewery to be open and safely accommodate a higher volume of weekend guests.

The copper kettle addition is a generational move, the press release noted, as it will allow for future growth in capacity in an area that will not be easily accessible for construction in the future.

Breaking ground at the ceremony were brewery founders Dan and Deb Carey, along with several community and state leaders. 

It was May’s, a licensed architect in Wisconsin, vision that led the design of this addition with an eye toward continuing the visual language of the brewery and increased sustainability.

“My hand prints are in the concrete at our original brewery and my dad hand-sketched the design of that brewhouse,” May said. “And now my son Teddy’s hand prints are in the concrete of our previous expansion, so it just really hits home for me how much history has already been created at this place and how this brewery reflects the involvement of our family over the years.”

The new building will be four stories, two of which are below ground level, and feature an expansive grass roof. The building utilizes an environmentally friendly geothermal heating and cooling system, will use reclaimed production water that is treated on-site for cleaning, and will feature electric car charging stations. 

“With this new addition, we tried to continue that same sort of feel — we wanted it to feel part of the community, we wanted it to feel historic, we want it to feel more like a village and not a large dot in the ground,” May said. “You’ll see a lot of that in the design, a lot of rich materials — stone, brickwork, heavy timber, there’s going to be a lot of great landscaping elements.”

New Glarus Brewing will also re-purpose its existing customer drive into a bike path that connects to the Sugar River Trail. There will be a new entry drive to the campus off of Wis. 69. The current parking lot will become a beer garden.

“With the design, we wanted to make sure there would be room for parking,” May said. “It was so silly, when we started Riverside we had about 15 parking stalls and we thought that was a lot. We moved up here (Hilltop) and we had about 50. But now we get thousands of visitors.”

The brewery has chosen to partner with Keller Inc., another Wisconsin-based employee-owned company, as its general contractor overseeing construction. Keller specializes in cutting-edge project and is respected for their construction excellence. 

“We remain astonished and appreciative at the amount of support we feel from Wisconsin,” Deb Carey said. “We do not plan to expand our distribution outside of our state. But we need to keep up with demand. When we originally built our Hilltop brewery in 2007, I never imagined we’d outgrow it in my lifetime, but here we are doing our 10th addition after already quadrupling our original square footage. This addition will ensure that current and future employee-owners will be able to accommodate guests and keep up with beer demand for generations to come.”

While the design for the upgrade began in spring 2022, civil work started early last month. Building work will begin in January 2025, and construction is expected to be completed in late fall 2026. 

The current Hilltop facility will close to the public around Christmas 2024, however, the riverside location — on the north side of New Glarus — will reopen to the public for the first time since 2007, which the Hilltop site was first completed.

“This new expansion ... we’re so excited to have weekend hours, we’re so excited to have increased production; to have the tourism that this community will continue to benefit from,” said Mark Pocan, Wisconsin’s Second District U.S. Representative during the groundbreaking ceremony.

— Adam Krebs and Natalie Dillon contributed to this story.