By Eric Curl
April 6, 2023 – Less than half a mile long, Indian Street packs in about three blocks worth of recent development projects just outside of Savannah’s downtown historic district. With the pending sale of a 60-year-old building on the corridor’s west end, that evolution is set to continue.
The Savannah College of Art and Design recently submitted plans to renovate the building that formerly housed the Ghost Coast Distillery at 641 West Indian St. SCAD is under contract to purchase the building to renovate the structure for “state-of-the-art” classrooms, according to a statement issued by the university on Monday.
Top to bottom. The closed distillery building with the Olmstead apartment in the background. SCAD’s under-construction 17-story student housing complex across the street. Eric Curl/March 4, 2023
The pending acquisition further establishes the university’s presence along the short stretch of Indian Street extending east from the Talmadge Bridge to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The corridor includes SCAD’s Alexander Hall, Adler Hall, Fahm Hall and Hamilton Hall. The Ghost Coast building is located next to a new SCAD parking garage and across the street from a 17-story student housing complex being built for the university. Recent private developments surrounding the Ghost Coast building include the Olmstead and Baxley apartment complexes. One block east of the former distillery, the veteran-owned Service Brewing Co. has been serving up craft beers for about nine years now. A US post office building across from the brewery, along with its parking lot, stands resolute amid the surrounding developments.
Ghost Coast opened in 2017 with the assistance of the Savannah Economic Development Authority, which provided a 5-year property tax abatement that ended in 2021. During that interval, the tax revenue increased from $9,654 in 2016 to $58,029, according to SEDA.
That assistance and the small distillery’s proximity to the ports was expected to help grow the business throughout the country and overseas, Ghost Coast co-founder Chris Sywassink said in a 2019 SEDA promotional video.
“We couldn’t thank SEDA enough,” Sywssink said in the video. “They are always trying to open up the door for us to continue our growth and continue our maturity to a well established alcohol manufacturer.”
In addition to whisky, vodka, gin and rum, the distillery added hand sanitizer to its product line in 2020 to help meet demand during the early days of the COVID-pandemic, as reported by the Savannah Morning News.
Sywassink declined to comment for this story.
With the pending acquisition by SCAD, a nonprofit, the property will likely return to a tax exempt status. However, a 2019 economic study found that the university contributes more than $577 million in economic impact to the city annually.
“SCAD has a four decades-long legacy of adaptive reuse of buildings in Savannah,” the SCAD statement said. “With (641 Indian St.), SCAD will continue to integrate our award-winning programs and diverse student population within the downtown Savannah community.”
Ghost Coast’s owners announced via social media in August last year that they would be closing the distillery that September due to “economic conditions”, as reported by Fox28 Savannah. Kris Bohm of Texas-based Distillery Now Consulting, is now brokering the sale of the distillery’s assets, including 478 barrels of bourbon and rum, as reported in February by the Savannah Business Journal. On Sunday, Bohm said the sale was pending, in response to an inquiry from Savannah Agenda.
The 17,000 square-foot Ghost Coast building, once home to the Frozen Paradise nightclub, was constructed in 1958 and had undergone a complete renovation to make way for a tasting room and 10,000-square-foot aging and distilling area, as reported by the Savannah Morning News.
#stayengagedsavannah
If you find value in this website, please consider contributing via Paypal to help cover the costs. You can also send contributions via Venmo @Eric-Curl and via CashApp at $ECrl77. Your support, no matter how much you give, is appreciated and will help ensure the future viability of this community resource. You can also show your support by sharing Savannah Agenda with others via email or social media by clicking the icons below. Increasing readership is critical to the long-term success of this site.