A taste of Bavaria is coming to Columbus.
A Hofbrauhaus restaurant and beer hall modeled after the 420-year-old Hofbrauhaus in Munich will open in the fall of 2014 as part of the next phase of development at Grandview Yard.
The property developer, Nationwide Realty Investors, also is plan¬ning an office building and a parking structure as part of the $25 million next phase of development, which will be at Goodale Boulevard and Yard Street. The Grandview Heights Planning Commission approved the plans Wednesday night.
The 18,000-square-foot Hofbrauhaus will seat 1,300 people. The restaurant space will include a large Bier Hall with live entertain¬ment, an Old World German style dining room and an outdoor Bier Garden. Inside, there will be decorations, steins and pitchers from Munich. Customers won’t sit at the typ¬ical tables and booths found in restaurants, but instead will be at long benchlike tables.
Hofbrau beer, which also is available in area stores, will be brewed at the restaurant, and twice a year the restaurant will bring beer directly from Munich, said Matt Plapp, who handles marketing for the group that owns the Columbus location.
“It’s a great location, a prime location for the concept,” Platt said.
Other Hofbrauhaus restaurants, which serve German and American food, are in Pittsburgh and near Cincinnati in Newport, Ky.
The Columbus location puts it close to Downtown, Ohio State Univer-sity and the Greater Columbus Convention Center, and it is easy to get to from major highways, Nationwide Realty President Brian Ellis said.
“All of these things attracted them to the site,” he said. “They want to be integrated into a neighborhood.”
The Pittsburgh and Newport locations have proven to be tourist draws, bringing people from as far as three or four hours away, Plapp said.
“Certainly it’s unique to the region,” said Chris Boring, principal at Boulevard Strategies. “I think it will be a regional draw for Grandview Yard.”
Boring said the Olentangy River Road area near Grandview Yard is a hot area of development right now and will benefit from the opening of a Giant Eagle grocery store next summer.
“That portends good things for Grandview Yard, since they have a lot of land for development,” he said.
Ellis said the Hofbrauhaus restaurants are high energy, with customers singing and dancing with the bands.
“I think it will be very unique,” he said. “It will be very attractive.”
Work on the site has started, and a formal groundbreaking is expected soon.
The restaurant will employ 60 to 80 workers part of the year and 120 to 150 during the spring and summer when the outdoor space will be open.
Meanwhile, completion of the three-story, 78,000-square-foot office building is expected in the spring of 2015, and the two-level garage with 505 spaces should open next fall.
Accounting, tax and consulting firm Ernst & Young will take up to 25 percent of the office building, according to Nationwide.
The firm, currently Downtown in the Huntington building, expects to move its 226 employees to the new office in the summer of 2015, said Craig Marshall, the firm’s office managing partner in Columbus.
“Grandview Yard offered the most amenities for our people,” he said. “It will be exciting to be part of a new space in a rapidly developing part of the city.”
He said the space will be more open and will help create an atmo¬sphere that will improve efficiency, communication and flexibility and will enhance teamwork.
The new office building brings total office space complete or under construction at Grandview Yard to more than 225,000 square feet.
The development also is home to a Hyatt Place Hotel, LA Fitness and the Buckeye Hall of Fame Grill restaurant.
Ellis figures it will be at least a decade before the 100-acre site that used to be home to a Big Bear warehouse is filled.
By the time it’s done, Nationwide Realty estimates that the site will have 1.5 million to 2 million square feet of commercial space made up of retail, restaurants, offices, condos and apartments.
Capitol Square Ltd., the commercial real-estate arm of The Dispatch Printing Company, publisher of The Dispatch, owns a 20 percent stake in Grandview Yard.
