Restaurant · Bonita Springs · 2024
Chubby Mermaid Brewing
Tenant improvement plans and permitting for a 2,174 square foot local brewery, the paperwork-heavy half of getting a taproom from concept to opening.
Sector
Restaurant · Brewery
Location
Bonita Springs, FL · Lee County
Size
2,174 sq ft
Completed
2024
Client
Chubby Mermaid Brewing LLC
In-house scope
Tenant improvement plans · Permitting
For Chubby Mermaid Brewing, Fort handled the part of opening a brewery that most people never see: the tenant improvement plans and the permitting for the 2,174 square foot Bonita Springs space. Before a single tap pours, a brewery has to exist on paper, correctly, and that was Fort’s job.
The challenge
A factory and a bar in the same room
A small brewery is two buildings sharing one address: a production space with tanks, process water, and real mechanical demands, and a hospitality space where the public gathers. The plans have to satisfy the code requirements of both at once, in barely over two thousand square feet, and a plan set that gets it wrong costs a small business months of review cycles it cannot afford while paying rent on a space that cannot open.
Our approach
Plans drawn by people who build
Fort’s tenant improvement plans are produced by a team that also constructs what it draws, which means the drawings answer the questions reviewers and builders actually ask. For Chubby Mermaid, Fort prepared the plan set and carried it through permitting, clearing the path for the buildout and giving a local owner one accountable party for the most failure-prone stage of the project.
The outcome
Cleared to build, cleared to pour
The plans were approved and the project permitted in 2024, taking a local Bonita Springs brewery from concept to a buildable, code-compliant reality. Alongside Fort’s restaurant and hospitality work like the Industry dining hall buildout and the Cru Wine space, it is part of a portfolio that knows its way around food, drink, and the permits behind them.
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