Great Lakes Brewing Confirms Plans for Scranton Peninsula Development, Just Not a Production Facility

For the past 37 years, Great Lakes Brewing Company has called Ohio City home.

From the birth and growth of GLBC into one of the Midwest’s biggest brewery brands, that has presented both its opportunities and challenges. And for years it has looked at opportunities to expand its footprint elsewhere.

In the next couple of years, that may finally happen.

On Friday, Pat and Dan Conway confirmed via a press release that they are investing hundreds of thousands of dollars to prepare a strip of land along the Flats’ Scranton Peninsula for just that kind of expansion.

“That could potentially be a waterfront entertainment venture and beer garden,” co-owner Dan Conway said.

Butting up against an eight-acre field Great Lakes bought seven years ago is a two-acre swath that runs from the Tremont bluffs to the southern edge of the Silverhills at Thunderbird apartment complex still in progress. And that ten acres, the Conways said, are plausibly going to be host to an “experience-based” piece of development that may or may not be Scranton’s second outdoor brewspace hugging the Cuyahoga. (Hello, Brewdog.)

The Conways cautioned, however, that a they still are looking at options elsewhere to expand brewing for Great Lakes.

“Those two acres would not satisfy our need for a production facility,” co-owner Pat Conway said in a statement. “But for [that] smaller, more experience-based Great Lakes initiative, we see a lot of possibilities.”

A grassy, communal space that “will be easily connected to both Irishtown Bend to the north, and to Bedrock’s 35-acre project to the east,” he added, “but also involves continued investment and operation of our historic Ohio City brewpub.”

It seems the Conways have been re-energized by the same philosophy that led them to help kickstart a West 25th renovation in the late 1980s and 1990s.

A kind of resurgence that, as Conway suggested, matches the energy around that Scranton site. And not just Thunderbird and The Collins work to create a new neighborhood—and obvious future regulars—just north of this beer garden thing.

But potential development from the Metroparks, a new kayak launch near Collision Bend, the Bedrock riverfront development, and Bibb’s lakefront master plan that may or may not be completed by the end of the decade.

While nearly half of Scranton Peninsula has been marked for new development, the other half lingers relatively unchanged from Scranton’s past as a haven for industry. Which is mainly what its eastern half is today: parking lots, vacant concrete and covert car and yacht service companies. (And a link, of course, to the Towpath Trail that runs through it all.)

The Conways gave no word as to when groundbreaking for the beer garden and entertainment complex might be. Friday’s announcement marks a total of $1.2 million spent to make those ten acres buildable.

And don’t worry, the legacy Ohio City pub is not going anywhere.

This article appears in Feb 13-26, 2025.