Stone Brewing Co.’s announcement a year and a half ago that it would open its East Coast expansion brewery in Richmond was widely celebrated as a win for the city, which beat out dozens of other municipalities to land the San Diego-based company.
But it’s a victory that appears to have come at a high cost to taxpayers — especially when compared with the incentives offered by the Roanoke area this year to lure its own major breweries.
To seal the deal with Stone, Richmond put up more than three times as much public money and incentives — a total of $33 million — than the city of Roanoke and Botetourt County combined committed to secure new facilities planned by Oregon’s Deschutes Brewing and California’s Ballast Point Brewing and Spirits.
