Though a $500,000 grant to help convert a building in downtown Washington into a brewery/restaurant was awarded last week, city officials began preparing for such a facility about three years ago.

New Vision Partners LLC, the grant recipient, has plans to reuse the building that once housed Fowle & Sons General Merchandise. According to the North Carolina Department of Commerce, the three-story building, vacant for 40 years, will house Castle Island Brewery. There has been at least one previous attempt to put a brewery of some type in the building.

Commerce Department documents show New Visions Partners Inc. as the managing member of New Vision Partners LLC. New Visions Partners Inc. was registered with the Commerce Department on July 29, 2013. The document lists Justin Fejfar and Mohamed Darar, both of Raleigh, as the people who signed the articles of organization.

The website for FDR Engineers lists Fejfar, a structural engineer, as a co-founder and principal of the company. The website includes the Fowle Building at 189 W. Main St. as one the company’s historic preservation projects. FDR Engineers has offices in Research Triangle Park (Durham) and Wilmington.

City Manager Bobby Roberson, who meet with Darar briefly Wednesday, said New Vision Partners would need to obtain state permits for the project. Some of those permits would come from the State Historic Preservation Office, which has to sign off on the proposed use of the historic building, and the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission, which regulates the sale, manufacture, purchase, consumption, possession and transportation of alcoholic beverages in the state.

(Darar was scheduled to meet with a Daily News reporter at 1 p.m. Wednesday to discuss the project, but did not show up. He did not respond to voice-mail messages.)

In October 2014, the council amended the city’s zoning code to allow microbreweries in certain commercial districts. The action came after someone expressed an interest in putting microbrewery in the old Fowle building at the intersection of West Main and Respess streets.

The amendment defines a brewery, microbrewery, tap room and brewpub. It also creates specific criteria for each of those uses.

• Brewery — manufactures malt liquors (beer and ales) in excess of 15,000 barrels (a barrel is about 31 gallons) a year.
• Microbrewery — manufactures malt beverages on the premises and produces less than 15,000 barrels of malt liquor a year. Microbreweries provide areas for on premise consumption, education, retail sales or other accessory uses.
• Taproom — an area that is necessary for a microbrewery where the public may purchase and/or consume on the beer produced on site. A taproom is considered an accessory use to a microbrewery.
• Brewpub — a combination brewery, restaurant and/or pub. Beer is brewed for consumption on the premises and served with food. A brewpub is considered an accessory use to a microbrewery.

With the change to the zoning code, breweries are allowed as a permitted use in the heavy industrial and light industrial zoning districts. Microbreweries are allowed as a special use in the business historic and general business districts. The city’s Board of Adjustment would issue special-use permits for microbreweries, which would be required to meet specific criteria before receiving a permit. The Board of Adjustment determines those specific criteria.

The following are special criteria required for a microbrewery to receive a special-use permit:

• The permit is valid for one year and must be renewed annually.
• Required to include one or more accessory uses such as a taproom, restaurant or other use incidental to the microbrewery and accessible to the public. The taproom shall have a minimum of 500 square feet.
• A microbrewery production area cannot exceed 7,500 square feet of gross floor space. Microbreweries adaptively reusing buildings within a National Register Historic District are exempt from size limitations for all portions of the building existing at the time the zoning code was amended.
• The permitted use must be a minimum of 200 feet from any church or religious institution, public or private school and day care facility.
• The Board of Adjustment may require other conditions as it deems necessary to ensure the proposed project is compatible with the city’s land-use and comprehensive plans.

In late 2014, the Historic Preservation Commission voted 3-2 to grant a certificate of appropriateness to New Vision Partners to install balconies on certain areas of the second and third floors of the building. The balconies plan, according to Trent Tetterton, who addressed the commission concerning the balconies, called for several of the building’s windows to be replaced by doors and for the doors to open to balconies. Fejfar filed the request for the certificate of appropriateness. Tetterton, an official with the Washington Harbor District Alliance, has played a part in helping find buyers and/or developers for downtown properties.