Warrenton Memorial Plaza, outside the post office in Warrenton, features a memorial statue and the flags of all the military branches. 

Two locals are planning the city’s only brewery inside one of the only historic buildings on Main Avenue in a move city leaders see as a shot in the arm to downtown.

Jon Elliott and Eric Lane are the partners behind Battery 245, named for one of the decommissioned artillery guns that stood sentry over the Columbia River during World War II.

Elliott graduated from Warrenton High School in 1998; Lane in 2004. They became friends working in the local service sector before starting to brew together and thinking of starting their own operation.

Warrenton and Gearhart are the only cities in Clatsop County without breweries. Astoria, with five breweries, a cidery and a distillery, has become a global draw for craft beverage fans.

“It’s kind of a mixed batch,” Elliott said of the response to the new brewery. “Some people say there’s enough, and some people say, ‘Hey, this is really what we want.’ I know that the soccer dads are tired of driving to Astoria all the time.”

Elliott, who has been brewing at home for the past decade, is the brains behind the brewery, which will start with a 1-barrel system he hopes will supply a restaurant and pub with about 200 gallons a year. Lane, who works at Warrenton Fultano’s, will focus more on the food, which he said will not resemble the deep-fried fare of many bars.

“It’s going to be small,” Lane said. “We’re thinking sandwiches, hot and cold sandwiches. We’re not going to have a deep fryer, so not a bunch of greasy stuff. We’ll be family friendly, so we’ll have some kids options too. It’s all a work in progress.”

Fenton GroceryThe partners had closed in on another building downtown before the deal fell through, Elliott said. They were eventually put in touch with Weston Roberts and his uncle, Russell Maize, who have been fixing up the 10,000-square-foot, 1925 Fenton Grocery building at the corner of First Street and Main Avenue.

The building, sometimes called the brown building because of its color scheme, includes a commercial space downstairs, where Maize’s grandfather once worked for Fenton Grocery. Several apartments upstairs are being refurbished.

Maize and Roberts have replaced siding on the building and applied for an urban renewal facade grant last year to further fix up the outside.

Last week, the City Commission supported matching up to $35,000 of the cost to renovate the building’s facade. The city’s grant money will go toward improving the facade, while the building and brewery owners are partnering on the rest of the renovation.

How long that will take depends on how much work the nearly 100-year-old building needs. Since the brewery would change the use of the former thrift store and grocery, the partners will need to bring many aspects of the interior up to modern code.

Lane said the timing of the coronavirus pandemic was fortunate for the partners, who can continue fixing up the building without the pressure to open soon. Battery 245 is going for an industrial, concrete look paying homage to the bowery’s namesake.

“We wanted it to look as much like a battery on the inside” as possible, Elliott said. “So slanted lights. We wanted to do concrete floors, but we’ll have to see about that. We had a contractor that said he knew how to do a concrete bar for us. He can do concrete seating.”

Downtown revampWarrenton’s downtown, sometimes forgotten amid the bustle of commerce at big-box stores along U.S. Highway 101, has received more attention in recent years, with new sidewalks, planters and the Warrenton Memorial Plaza constructed near the post office.

City Commissioner Rick Newton announced last week that Arnie’s Cafe, a popular local breakfast and lunch spot, will open in early August in his former NAPA Auto Parts store after moving closer into downtown from near the high school.

The project at the Fenton Building is part of a larger budget for the city’s Urban Renewal Agency, which includes paving a parking lot next to City Hall to make it more attractive to food carts, adding more sidewalks and moving utility lines underground along Main Avenue.

Kevin Cronin, the city’s community development director until he left Friday to be city manager of Mount Angel, had been searching for a brewery that could help drive more people downtown.

Cronin faced questions from city commissioners last week about whether the matching program, bigger than many of the city’s facade improvement projects, was being properly overseen.

City Manager Linda Engbretson gave her word that the facade improvement will be overseen to ensure the city’s money is properly spent. Cronin cast the renovation of the drab Fenton Grocery building as a more involved project that could ultimately reap bigger rewards for downtown.

“Really, when you think about it, it’s really a stimulus package for the downtown,” he said. “And God knows we need something for our downtown, given the situation that we have today.”