Entrepreneur Sam McNulty prepares for stage four of his Ohio City grand plan — a craft brewery

By Thomas Skernivitz

Once given a taste of Ohio City ­— particularly the neighborhood’s flagship nightspot, Great Lakes Brewing Co. — a 20-something Sam McNulty always knew he would someday return to the Cleveland neighborhood to live or work.
More than a decade later, the 35-year-old developer is living, working, and playing on basically the same near-West Side block while giving other Ohio City patrons reason to join him.
With his own brewery, Market Garden Brewery, scheduled to open at the end of this year, McNulty will own four establishments on West 25th Street. The Bier Markt, a Belgian beer house, started it all in 2005. Two years later in the same building, Bar Cento, an Italian restaurant, made its debut. Last year McNulty opened Speakeasy, a culinary cocktail bar, in the basement of Bier Markt.
Apparently, there’s no end in sight to Greater Cleveland’s desire to have a good time. Each establishment has enjoyed capacity crowds since opening, McNulty says.
“Business is very good — despite the economy,” McNulty says. “It’s kind of like Napoleon said: ‘In victory, you deserve Champagne. In defeat, you need it.’ So if the economy is great or if you got a raise, it’s, like, ‘Hey, let’s go have a drink and celebrate.’ If you just got laid off, ‘Hey, let’s go have a drink.’”
The Market Garden Brewery will be located directly across the street from McNulty’s original three businesses. The West Side Market, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2012, is next door.
“(The brewery) was in the plans from Day 1,” McNulty says. “I had been in negotiations for the property even prior to opening Bier Markt. It’s been vacant the last 10 years.”
Along with 12 styles of beer, the brewery will feature its own distillery. Whiskey, rum, brandy, and gin will be made on the premises. Ohio boasts only two similar distilleries, McNulty says, and patrons of those facilities can’t enjoy the product onsite.
The property will include an American-style beer garden — a “little bit of an oasis of greenery in the city,” McNulty says — and, upon the finish of phase two, a pair of rooftop bars: one in line with the downtown skyline; the other overlooking the neighborhood.
Among McNulty’s neighbors, of course, is Great Lakes Brewing Co., which opened in 1988, well before the revitalization of the neighborhood. And while Great Lakes and Market Garden may appear to be competitors, the exact opposite is true, McNulty says. “We want to create a beer town down here,” he says. “If anyone in Ohio wants to go and experience the best craft beer, this is where you’d come.”
The owners of Great Lakes, brothers Pat and Dan Conway, are supporters, McNulty says. “After I bought this building, I called up Pat Conway and said, ‘Let’s sit down over a beer. I want to tell you what my plans are and see how we can work together.’ Pat’s a good friend and obviously a very talented businessman. He saw exactly what we’re trying to do — that we want to make this district grow and flourish and make it even more of a destination point,” McNulty says.
Bier Markt brew master Andy Tveekrem, who formerly worked at Great Lakes, and current Great Lakes counterpart Luke Purcell may even collaborate their work. “I guarantee if Great Lakes is low on barley or malt or hops, we’ll be lending a couple of bags, and vice versa,” McNulty says.
Born and raised in the Coventry neighborhood of Cleveland Heights, McNulty discovered Ohio City during an internship with the Ohio City Near West Development Corp. His studies at Cleveland State University earned him an undergraduate degree in urban planning, design, and development and a master’s degree in real estate development.

"Business is very good — despite the economy."

At one point, McNulty owned 21 properties, mostly residential. He also owned Café 101, an Italian-style café on the campus of Cleveland State. After eight successful years, the university chose not to renew the lease, according to McNulty. The lesson learned at CSU is one that McNulty has not forgotten, particularly when area developers and even investors from New York and Chicago contact him about branching into other locations.
“What we’ve said is a) we want to control the property; we don’t want a lease. We learned that lesson at CSU,” McNulty says. “And b) we feel there’s a strong market in the city proper here that is not being served.”
Not that there is a shortage of places to visit and things to do in Ohio City. McNulty, who lives in a building just a few feet from his properties, does not even own a car. If he needs to travel outside of the neighborhood, he hops on his scooter or bicycle.
“Ohio City is definitely the premier neighborhood in Cleveland,” he says. “It’s walkable. There are all kinds of people down here, all kinds of diversity, and there’s life on the streets.”
And there’s great food, which benefits McNulty, who admits to having only eggs, bread, and beer in his refrigerator.
“I can walk to over three dozen very unique, very interesting restaurants and bars, and not a single one of them is a chain. Not many places in the country that can say that,” McNulty says. “I dare anyone to find any part of town that has a Lebanese, Cambodian/Vietnamese, Cuban, and soon-to-be Turkish restaurant all next door to each other. It’s like the United Nations of food on one block.”  
For more information: marketgardenbrewery.com