Brewpub developer returns with another plan

A month after Port Washington’s Plan Commission rejected a revised plan for Inventors Brewpub, members are poised to review a new proposal for the building on the city’s north marina slip.

The commission will meet at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 18, to review the design.

In April, commission members turned down the revised building plan, saying it strayed too far from the original design and cheapened it.

“To me it’s not a lifetime design,” Mayor Ted Neitzke, chairman of the Plan Commission, said at the time. “I don’t believe we should put up a building that doesn’t meet the highest standards in one of the best spots literally in the country.

“These adjustments don’t make the building better.”

Neitzke said Tuesday that he had not yet studied the newest iteration of the plan but as long as it’s close to the original design, it should be approved.

“They told me they have added back a number of things,” he said.

One thing he liked about the April plan, Neitzke said, is that the height of the building was reduced by three feet — something that remains in the plan to be reviewed on Thursday.

The new plan makes a number of changes but leaves intact the reduced height of the structure.

Gertjan van den Broek of TBF Inc., which is building the structure, said last month that the changes were needed because the original building plan was not feasible due to changing economic conditions and financial restrictions as well as some functional challenges.

In a memo to the commission, he and Inventors owner Adam Draeger outlined a number of revisions in the latest plan, saying, “The design, construction and owner team believe they have managed to thread the needle.”

The changes, they wrote, include extending an entrance overhang on the north side of the building, enlarging many of the windows and incorporating materials that match the original design.

“The presented changes ... meet the original design intent whilst improving the building form-fit-and-function,” they said in the memo.

Approval of the plan will allow them to have the structural steel needed for the building fabricated and ensure the building is completed so Inventors can open its doors next spring, they noted.