Brewery planned for Harlan County hopes to show that Eastern KY is a solid investment

Geoff Marietta received an email in 2019 from Louisville developer Gill Holland with the subject “Harlan County Beer Company” and a logo attached.

Marietta already owned Moonbow Tipple Coffee and Sweets in downtown Harlan and stores in Corbin and Williamsburg.

“I thought ‘you’re crazy,’” Marietta said. “A brewery in Harlan? Sure, let’s do the coffee shop. Harlan wasn’t really wet at that point in time.”

The city voted to allow alcohol sales in late 2019, joining Cumberland. The city was already moist, allowing alcoholic beverages to be served only at restaurants and conventions. The county remained dry.

Harlan Mayor Joe Meadors said the decision to go wet was the beginning of a better time.

Colby Kirk, director of One Harlan County, said the approval of Harlan’s alcohol sales prompted several new businesses to express interest in opening.

Holland was one of them.

He and Marietta already had a building in mind for the brewery, the former Bissell Building at 120 Central Street in downtown Harlan.

The 100-year-old building was in rough shape after being empty for years. Kirk said in his first visit, you could see the sun shining through the ceiling on the third floor and moss and grass growing on the ground floor.

To Marietta, the building was the “cornerstone of Harlan’s downtown.”

Renovations have begun to transform the building into a tap-room first brewery, which will concentrate on in-person consumption, with a restaurant. Harlan County Beer Company is expected to open in November.

Marietta and Holland are seeking investors through WeFunder, a crowd investment platform that allows people to invest as little as $100 for a return over five years. They have raised more than $170,000 from 224 investors. Some of the investors are local, others are from Louisville and have never set foot in the county. The brewery will cost $350,00 to open and the two hope to get at least $250,000 from community investment.

“It’s nice to see people outside seeing Harlan County worth investing in,” Kirk said. “This community is worth investing in. A dollar goes further on Main Street than on Wall Street.”

The investment will benefit a place that has natural beauty, a rich culture and hardworking people who are loving and curious — things that can’t be replicated anywhere else, Marietta said.

Holland’s father lived in Harlan County, and he grew up in a one-stop light town in North Carolina. Marietta’s wife’s family is from Harlan County and he moved to the area in 2015.

“People in Harlan County believe in Harlan County, and so they see someone like me and my wife who maybe didn’t grow up right here but are like ‘Dang they are investing in a community I believe in,’” Marietta said. “They see that and become believers of us.”

Like many downtowns in Eastern Kentucky, Harlan became a ghost town, Meadors said.

The city had made a huge effort to clean up and focus on an industry other than coal: eco-tourism. Then everything came to a screeching halt when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

He was glad to see Marietta and Holland stay the course.

Brandon Pennington, director of Harlan County Tourism, said the Harlan County Beer Company will show residents that a project of this magnitude can succeed.

The brewery, Meadors hopes, will be a linchpin for downtown development.

It also hopes to be a mecca for outdoor tourists who want to cap off their visit to Harlan County with an adult beverage, Pennington said.

As Eastern Kentucky begins to shift away from the once-dominating coal industry, tourism is seen as a key piece of the region’s economic future.

“Tourism is not the silver bullet,” Marietta said. “It is one component of a strategy to revitalize the economy here.”

According to the Appalachian Regional Commission’s tourism report, alcohol restrictions deter visits from a valuable demographic (high-income travelers that want to enjoy alcohol on vacation), deny restaurants a valuable and profitable revenue stream, create a barrier to fine-dining that many small communities need, and erase potential tax revenue from the sale of alcohol.

“In many cases, they essentially ‘give’ these revenues to adjacent counties, thus helping provide their neighbors with funding for the schools, roads, and services they need for themselves,” the study stated.

Harlan County Beer Company will be the only brewery within a two-hour drive. Pikeville’s Broken Throne Brewing is 85 miles away.