The on-off saga of Moon Dog's attempts to move into the former Franco Cozzo site in Footscray is back on. Following further discussions, the City of Maribyrnong confirmed the brewery has the green light to move in.
Moon Dog co-founder Josh Uljans told The Crafty Pint they'd previously been looking at sites in Footscray and West Footscray before the COVID pandemic arrived, although their interest in the iconic Cozzo building came later.
"It's perfectly located," he says. "It's by the train station, across from Footscray Market, at the beginning of the main drag, and only three kilometres from the CBD.
"It just seemed such an ideal space for us to build our next venue. It's just been a bit of a journey to get there."
The plan is for the Footscray venue to focus purely on hospitality – they won't be installing a brewery here – and, all being well, the 800-capacity venue, which has yet to be named, will be open to the public this coming summer.
"There's a lot of different considerations when you're looking to put something like this into an area like Footscray, where there's a lot of different parties you need to make sure you're working with," Josh says. "It's a process, but it's one that we worked through really productively and have now reached a really good outcome."
The Crafty Pint first reported the brewery's intentions to add another sizeable hospitality venue to their two current sites – the OG Moon Dog in Abbotsford and Moon Dog World in Preston – last December. Then, back in June, the proposal was rejected by the council, leading to further discussions and, now, the go-ahead.
In a statement announcing the decision today, the council said safety concerns around the original application to transform the former Franco Cozzo building on Hopkins Street have now been resolved.
The statement said: "Moon Dog has agreed to manage occupancy to mitigate the risks to large numbers of patrons exiting onto the narrow footpath adjacent to a busy road.
"This means a slight change to the previously proposed hours of operation – from 11am to 11pm Sunday to Thursday – and 1am Friday and Saturday, with a gradual reduction in occupancy after 10pm."
There will also be upgrades to pedestrian fencing and the footpath adjacent to Shelley Street and, subject to VCAT approval, a planning permit is set to be issued shortly.
It's not the only new Moon Dog site in planning either. The brewing company has a planning application in with the Frankston council for another venue overlooking the city's Foreshore.
James Smith launched The Crafty Pint in 2010, two years after moving to Australia from the UK. He was taken to Mountain Goat within weeks of landing in Melbourne, joined their indoor cricket team, and is still navigating the rabbit hole that is craft beer to this day.
The beers that turned you on to good beer:
- Watching pints of McEwan's 80 Shilling settle when visiting family in Edinburgh.
- Pints of flat Bass from the jug at the Cap & Stocking in Kegworth.
- A first Paulaner Hefeweizen when working in Munich in 1998: “This smells of bananas!”
- Castle Rock Harvest Pale – how could a 3.8 percent ABV beer be so good? (It turns out it was an early example of the three Cs – Cascade, Centennial and Columbus – in an English bitter).
- Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA poured through hops at the Sunset Grill in Cambridge, MA, in the company of a man who turned out to be the Beer Nut (while we were both covering a double murder case at the time).
- Ordering a Mountain Goat Hightail on my first day as an Aussie resident as it was local and I’d never heard of it; “A dark Australian beer; well I never…”
- Murray’s Icon 2IPA at Beer DeLuxe Fed Square, recommended by a guy I’d not long known who's now the main man at Fixation, served by Mik Halse, now head of sales at Hawkers. How could an Australian beer smell as good as that?!?
You've got three beers to turn someone else on to good beer; what are they and why?
- Any really good, fresh and balanced West Coast style IPA. Punchy hop aromatics are the most obvious way to capture someone's attention and these IPAs, done well, present the key components in beer (if you're sticking to just water, malt, hops and yeast) in harmony yet with the volume turned up.
- Saison Dupont. Arguably a selfish choice here as I bloody love the broad saison style and dearly hope it will finally take hold in Australia one day. Given a choice, I'd probably crack one enlivened with Brettanomyces like Molly Rose Matilde for myself but, when it comes to turning on someone new, you've got to go with the classic.
- Rodenbach Caractère Rouge. Because if you don't enjoy or can't appreciate this beer, I'll never win you over. And because Filip, the fruit and wood specialist at Rodenbach that designed it, is a beautiful human.
The last beer you enjoyed:
Fixation IPA at The Incubator.
Three things that represent you:
- The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Golden Plains
NB All articles written by James in the first eight years of the site appear as By Crafty Pint. Today, that's used for collaborative efforts by the wider team.
