The Village at Sunriver will host the resort area’s first brewery.

Construction began early this month on the Sunriver Brewing Co. brewpub on Abbot Drive, which should open its doors inside the shopping center in the early part of the summer, said Brian Cameron of Bend, one of three partners in the brewery, along with his father, Marc Cameron of White Salmon, Wash., and chef Geoff Gill of Hood River.

The idea is to start up in time to serve pints and food to visitors in the heavy tourist months of July and August, Cameron said.

“It’s a great business model,” Cameron said of breweries. “I’ve had some brewing experience in the past. I’m very interested in beer and restaurants as a whole.”

With outdoor seating Cameron and his partners will add near the 3,600-square-foot space, the brewpub should be able to serve 170 to 180 people at a time with the help of 20 to 30 employees, he said.

The goal in the beginning is to offer beer and food on-site, Cameron said, although he and his partners have entertained the idea of selling kegs to restaurants in Central Oregon.

Asked about bottling or canning Sunriver Brewing beer, Cameron said, “We don’t have any plans at this particular time, but of course we hope to get that big.”

The brewpub will contain a small brewery for formulating recipes. The company will run a brewery with greater capacity off site, Cameron said.

Cameron declined to name the person who will lead up the company’s brewing, but he said when the brewery opens it will offer at least one of his own recipes, a pale ale.

That will be available in addition to the brewery’s stout, amber ale and India pale ale, alongside beers from other Central Oregon breweries, Cameron said.

Sunriver Brewing will join the ever-expanding pack of Central Oregon breweries. Depending on the time lines of other developing breweries, it could be the 13th, 14th or 15th to become operational in the region.

Craft brewing — involving breweries with production under 6,000,000 barrels per year — is on the rise nationally, too.

The nonprofit Brewers Association announced Monday that craft brewery sales by volume came in at 5.68 percent last year, up from 4.97 percent in 2010. And for the first time, the national brewery count reached 2,000 in February.

But in Sunriver, the concept of brewing beer commercially is new.

The company is spending $72,000 on construction, according to building documents on file with Deschutes County.