'Indoor beer garden' to open this fall on MLK

Jay Boyd stands in front of the future home of Oddstory Brewing Co. The familiar building, located in the 300 block of M.L. King Blvd., will be repurposed by late fall, according to Boyd.
Jay Boyd stands in front of the future home of Oddstory Brewing Co. The familiar building, located in the 300 block of M.L. King Blvd., will be repurposed by late fall, according to Boyd.
photo Jay Boyd stands in front of the future home of Oddstory Brewing Co. The familiar building, located in the 300 block of M.L. King Blvd., will be repurposed by late fall, according to Boyd.

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Keep up with developments at OddStory Brewing Co. online at www.oddstorybrewing.co and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/oddstorybrewingco

OddStory Brewing Co., an "indoor beer garden," is due to open this fall in a long-vacant building on M.L. King Boulevard - and add to the commercial boom going on there near the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's campus.

Jay Boyd, 25, expects to open the microbrewery in late October at 336 M.L. King Blvd. on the corner of Foster Street.

"It's been about 20 years since they've had anyone in that space," Boyd said of the empty, brick storefront.

He plans to brew 1,200 31-gallon barrels of beer a year - with the flagships being American pale ale, Vienna lager and a Belgian blonde made with fresh ginger.

The beers will be hop-forward, but with tropical, floral aromas and flavors and not "super bitter," Boyd said, to appeal to local beer lovers' tastes.

"Chattanooga is becoming a hoppier and hoppier town," he quipped.

In keeping with the beer garden theme, OddStory Brewing Co. will have skylights, bar seating up front near glass roll-up doors and two 36-seat community tables.

TVs only will be on display for special events, such as the Super Bowl.

"One of the main themes of our tap room is going to be human interaction," Boyd said. "Without TVs, you're going to be forced to talk to each other."

Boyd plans to bring live music and other performers to the space; he's been talking with a local storyteller's group and with an Americana music class.

"We're going to do live music with local people," Boyd said.

Food for sale at OddStory will include pulled pork over corn bread, meatballs, and pretzels with beer cheese, all provided by downtown Chattanooga's Dish T'Pass Cooking School & Catering Co.

Boyd graduated in 2013 from Covenant College with a business degree. He knew for certain that he wanted to be a brewer after working for a year at Yellowhammer Brewing in Huntsville, Ala.

Boyd then spent four months studying the brewing craft at the American Brewers Guild in Salisbury, Vt., which included an internship at Harpoon Brewing, which has facilities in Vermont and Boston.

He is opening OddStory Brewing Co. in partnership with his dad, Bryan Boyd, who sold his share in a Decatur, Ala., business making trade show exhibit booths so he could focus on the brewery.

The Boyds will invest $400,000 in the business, Jay Boyd said, including the furnishings, installing five stainless-steel beer fermenters and painting the exterior charcoal black.

The building's owner, Chris Curtis, will spend more than that in renovations, Boyd said, including shoring up the brick building.

Curtis owns the nearby seven-story, 691-bed Douglas Heights apartments building at 423 E. M.L. King Blvd. that has its grand opening today. Its tenants, mostly UTC students, already have one microbrewery within a block, Hutton & Smith Brewing Co., and will have another when OddStory opens.

"That's going to be great," Boyd said.

OddStory Brewing Co. will get grant money, Boyd said, including $5,000 for signage, from the River City Co. which awards grants funded by the The Benwood Foundation to attract news businesses and renovate M.L. King.

"We do have some grant funding available for the MLK corridor, and we have made some available to them," said Jim Williamson, vice president of planning and development at River City.

"It's a small area, essentially from Georgia Avenue to the train trestle," Williamson said. "It's for retail-like tenants, tenants that activate the corridor. Main Street is a very hot and thriving area. This is the same kind of program we did on Main Street."

Boyd said, "There's a lot of focus on this street. I think, in a few years, this street is going to look a lot different."

Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu @timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/MeetsForBusiness or twitter.com/meetfor business or 423-757-6651.

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