For patrons of microbreweries in Michigan, there’s a good chance their favorite spot was designed by DesignTeam Plus in Birmingham, which has completed nine projects and contributed to the design of many more since 2015.
The company’s brewery projects stretch from downtown Farmington to Cheboygan, and have ranged from basic interior redesigns to historic preservations and, more recently, ground-up construction projects. Each design reflects the vision of the brewery’s owner.
“When they come to us, we ask them to give us three adjectives to describe how they want their space to look,” says Shari Stein, co-owner and principal interior designer at DesignTeam Plus. “Every single brewery that we’ve done is completely different. They all want to be different than anyplace else. No cookie-cutters.”
How did a design shop in Birmingham that opened in 2012 become a go-to for breweries? It began with the first establishment it took on: Draught Horse Brewery and Spirits in west Oakland County’s Lyon Township.
“It all starts with an individual story,” says Harold Remlinger, co-owner and principal architect at DesignTeam Plus. “In this client’s case, he and his wife are horse owners. We started looking at old equestrian barn interiors so those ideas could translate to their brand identity.”
The overall objective, according to Remlinger, was the adaptive reuse of a vacated 3,600-square-foot Mexican restaurant. DesignTeam Plus’s response was to create a horse stable tack room.
The interior tap room design incorporated:
• Blackened metal welded frames to resemble horse stalls.
• Reclaimed barnwood beams at the ceiling level with wood block tackle, to resemble a mortice-and-tenon barn construction.
• Wood plaster lath walls salvaged from homes demolished in Detroit as part of the city’s blight removal program.
• Double-hung windows that were reclaimed on-site.
• Tabletops and bar tops that were made from repurposed compressed straw, reinforcing the overall horse theme.
• Wall art made from a variety of the owners’ collection of antique saddles, bridles, stall doors, and hand tools.
The exterior design included:
• Preserving the building facade’s board-and-batten siding treatments.
• Installing large streetside windows to enable patrons to see the brewery equipment in production from the street.
• An entry door resembling a horse stall door with forged metal grillwork over-glazing.
• An all-season outdoor terrace with wood timber beams and a fireplace.
• Oakland County’s only township-approved horse parking lot spots, with hitching posts that meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Forest Service’s Equestrian Design Guidebook’s specifications.
The success of the Draught Horse Brewery and Spirits project led to others, which led to others.
“One thing we like about the beer industry is every microbrewer is a friend of another microbrewer, and they welcome each other into their community,” Remlinger says. “They help each other out.”
Word of mouth led to more projects, and once DesignTeam Plus gained added experience, it developed a proficiency.
“You have to understand it to be able to design it,” Remlinger says, especially when it comes to the brewhouse infrastructure.
“With the brewery in mind, you’re dealing with waste disposal that includes solids,” he explains. “There’s storage for used grain, glycol chillers that are going to all the fermenters, and CO2 storage, delivery, and monitoring systems. You have to understand the flow and function of the back room, from the raw materials coming in to the completed product going to distribution.”
Another notable project was Stiggs Brewery and Kitchen in Boyne City.
“Stiggs was the former Boyne City-to-Gaylord-to-Alpena railroad office building,” Remlinger says. “That was a historic preservation project.”
Maintaining the character of the building’s interior and exterior was critical. The flow and organization of the interior space was guided by the original glass hallway partitions, according to Remlinger. Preservation of the original wood tongue-and-groove beadboard paneled walls, ceiling, and hardwood floors influenced the interior design.
DesignTeam Plus collaborated with a local artist to create a bottle cap mosaic on the bar face, which was reminiscent of the historic flow-through spittoon trough bar face and gutter. The designers also integrated mosaic patterns for the tabletops.
Reminiscent of 19th century life, the bar’s 31 taps were mounted to a 72-inch lumberjack cross-cut saw. The bar is a solid piece of white pine, the exterior door handle is a logging hatchet, and the plaid bottle cap design of the tabletops plays off the stereotypical plaid flannel worn by lumberjacks.
Closer to home, Heights Brewing in downtown Farmington is another DesignTeam Plus project. The clients, owners Ryan Kavanaugh and Shawn MacDonell, wanted their business to connect with the community.
“One of the things I very much wanted was for people to have the experience of being able to look in and see the fermenters, see everything going, and try to figure out what’s coming out next,” Kavanaugh says of his vision.
“I wanted a brick wall, which is part of the schtick for our lifetime mug club. Every name you see is a member of the mug club. We wanted to make people part of the establishment; put them on the wall.”
The interior design also incorporates a custom wallcovering of a “beer map” of Michigan, tagging a brewery to each beer style — all connecting back to Heights Brewing. It also features the building’s original concrete floor from the 1940s, as well as a mosaic from the restaurant’s past when it was called Steinhaus.
“This is history,” Kavanaugh says of the establishment. “This is gorgeous.”
Critical to the design of the brewery was the necessity to offer a gluten-free beer and food menu, creating an additional level of planning and design. To brew gluten-free beer, the brewery must shut down and all the equipment has to be thoroughly cleaned so the gluten-free beer can be safely brewed.
“We created two grain mills, regular and gluten-free,” Remlinger says. “Both rooms have exhaust systems, so they’re removing any particulates in the air.”
At most microbreweries, the brewhouse is separated from the taproom but visible through a window, like at Heights Brewing. One exception is Cadillac Straits in Madison Heights, which also serves as a supply house for home-brewers.
“At Cadillac Straits, the brewhouse sits in the middle of the restaurant,” Remlinger says. “They wanted to do a teaching brewery for their homebrewer clubs.”
Until recently, all of the projects DesignTeam Plus has worked on have been redesigns of existing spaces. Current and future projects will feature new-builds including a brewery in Wyandotte and a distillery in Detroit, and working as a consultant on a ground-up brewery project, also in Detroit.
DesignTeam Plus has another somewhat surprising specialty in addition to its focus on breweries: Coptic Orthodox churches and other religious buildings.
To date, the company has worked on the design of St. Mark Coptic Orthodox in Troy, St. Nina Coptic Orthodox Church in Shelby Township, St. Mary and St. Anthony Coptic Orthodox Retreat and Conference Center in Newport, north of Monroe, and the Jewish Resource Center in Ann Arbor.
Remlinger, who also has projects in health care, commercial retail, law enforcement, and other sectors in the DesignTeam Plus portfolio, says, “We found that being diverse helps you ride the ebbs and flows of the industry.”
