Creature Comforts Brewing Co. will open a beer garden inside a giant former U.S. Pipe foundry building next to Erlanger Park, the new home of the Chattanooga Lookouts minor league baseball team.
The building, nicknamed “the Shed,” will be a temporary home for the beer garden as Creature Comforts plans to eventually occupy a permanent location next door along the Tennessee Riverwalk, according to the announcement on Monday.
Both Erlanger Park and the beer garden are scheduled to open in April, filling out the core of the Foundries District. The Lookouts will play the Montgomery Biscuits in the opening game at Erlanger Park on April 14.
(READ MORE: Chattanooga City Council pleased with new Lookouts stadium: ‘Met my expectations’)
Creature Comforts opening beer garden by Chattanooga Lookouts stadium
The beer garden will be able to host hundreds of guests and will serve the brewery’s core beers along with seasonal and limited series beers, according to a press release.
Creature Comforts, founded in 2014 and based in Athens, Georgia, has distributed its beer in Chattanooga since 2022. The company is the 31st largest craft brewery in the U.S., and its flagship India pale ale, called Tropicália, is the best-selling craft IPA in the Southeast.
“The Beer Garden is more than a taproom — it’s a front-row seat to Chattanooga’s next great chapter in the development of the Foundries District,” Creature Comforts founder and CEO Adam Beauchamp said in the release. “Fostering human connection is our purpose, and creating welcoming spaces like this — designed for people to come together — is one way we bring that purpose to life. We’re grateful to be embraced by the Chattanooga community, and we’re excited to grow with the district.”
LARGER DISTRICT
When it opens, the beer garden will be open on most game days, non-game day weekends and other occasions like concerts and food events. The beer garden fits into the larger vision for the district, said Jim Irwin, president of Atlanta-based New City Properties and master developer of the district.
“It will be such a fun and rewarding moment to see people experience the inside of this grand structure that they’ve been driving by for so many years,” Irwin said in the release. “Creature Comforts is a beloved and celebrated brand, well-known for creating spaces that become favorite gathering spots in their communities. This is the first of many wonderful things to come in the Foundries District.”
Celebrations for the beer garden’s grand opening will be announced soon, the company said. Creature Comforts products can be found at more than 130 retailers in Chattanooga, said Cole Nicholson, the company’s senior director of strategy. Its beer garden in the Shed will be open-air, and the company would like to eventually move to another reclaimed U.S. Pipe structure, Nicholson said.
“There will be a small stage and seating for entertainment, and plenty of space to bring in local vendors and activities,” Nicholson said in an email. “There is no set timeline for when we transition to our permanent one.”
U.S. Pipe established its foundry off South Broad Street in 1899 and closed down operations in 2006. Together with the former Wheland Pipe foundry, the two sites cover around 120 acres, where tens of thousands of Chattanoogans worked.
Perimeter Properties owns the site and donated land to Chattanooga and Hamilton County for the $115 million stadium. Once the stadium opens, New City Properties will begin the first phase of private development at the Foundries District. The project will include a 300-unit apartment building and 80,000 square feet of office space for a total investment of around $140 million, said Andy Stone, a partner at Perimeter Properties.
Bringing Irwin on board, as well as New York City-based S9 Architecture and Kansas City-based architect Populous, has given the stadium and the district a touch of national expertise.
“We augmented the local group with real, true experts in historic preservation and baseball,” Stone said on a tour of the stadium in February.
Development on the foundry site and along South Broad Street will help pay off debt on the stadium through new property tax revenue above 2021 levels. Developers have announced or begun building more than $470 million of projects in the tax district around the stadium.
Contact business reporter Daniel Dassow at ddassow@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318.