Aug. 26—The head of the nonprofit that promotes the craft brewing industry in Maryland says Harford County's proposed rules for future farm breweries would be among the most restrictive in the state and will likely drive those businesses elsewhere.
"This basically says, 'you should look at Cecil County,'" Kevin Atticks, the Executive Director of the Brewers Association of Maryland, said at Wednesday's meeting of the workgroup tasked with updating Harford's farm brewery legislation.
County councilman Robert Wagner assembled a study group to reexamine legislation allowing farm breweries after the council passed a 120-day moratorium on approval of new farm breweries in June. In Wagner's view, farm breweries in the county had strayed from being a supplemental source of income for some farmers to becoming their primary money-makers.
But at the group's Wednesday meeting, Atticks said the rules discussed by the work group would be some of the most restrictive in the state, if made law. While Wagner proposed requiring 25 acres of land to set up a farm brewery, Atticks said he thought that was higher than it should be, and anything more would be the highest threshold required in the state.
Though the proposed changes to the law were not enumerated, the study group previously discussed requiring ownership of the farm for three years before establishing a farm brewery, as well as residency and minimum acreage requirements. As the proposal stands, it gives the brewers association "heartburn," Atticks said, and could dissuade would-be-farmers and brewery owners from setting up shop in Harford.
"This really has shades of anti-competitiveness and overtones of 'we welcome you, but you have to be a big landowner,'" Atticks said.
Councilman Tony Giangiordano said that, as much heartburn as the association feels over the proposed changes to the law, residents who live near farm breweries are similarly concerned with the noise, traffic and bustle the businesses bring. Several residents who live near farm breweries have contacted him and Wagner, Giangiordano said.
Wagner also noted that agriculturally zoned land is generally cheaper than commercial property and that some county residents do not expect to see a potentially packed brewery when they move in next to farmland.
"You've got plenty of communities that have bought where they bought for the reasons that they did, and the rural nature is part of it, only to find out in a few short years — or even sooner — the rural character of where they bought has morphed into almost a renaissance festival three nights a week," Wagner said.