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Rhombus Guys Transforming GF Opera House into a Brewpub

RhombusOperaRhombus Guys Pizza who have locations in Grand Forks, Fargo, and Mentor (seasonal), recently purchased the Grand Forks’ Metropolitan Opera House and are planning on turning the first floor into a brewpub.  Over the last few months they have advertised for an experienced brewmaster on probrewer.com and brewingworks.com to find a head brewer to work with them through the startup with the planning, design, construction, hiring and managing of the brewpub.

When Rhombus Guys first opened in Fargo back in 2011, their liquor license carries a microbrew designation, meaning Rhombus can add a microbrewery in the future, though they had no imediate plans, they had hopes for the future.  They bought the Opera House in mid 2013 but recently there have been a few articles in their plans (link, link) and the GF Herald’s article from 3/14 spells out more of their plans.

Rhombus Guys fine tuning plan for brewpub

By Christopher Bjorke & John Hageman on Mar 14, 2014

The Rhombus Guys are fine-tuning their plan to transform downtown Grand Forks’ Metropolitan Opera House into a brewpub.

Co-owner Arron Hendricks said they have a brewing license application pending, and a historic impact review for the 1889 building at 116 S. Third St. has passed a state review.

But architectural design and other details are still being refined.

“We’re still trying to hammer out those details,” Hendricks said. “The design process is taking longer than anticipated.”

He and partner Matt Winjum have been going through brewmaster candidates, but have not hired anyone yet.

Hendricks does not expect any work to start on the building for several more months, but once the building details are worked out and licenses are approved, their ambitions for Grand Forks beer should be a go, he said.

“At this point, we’re assuming we’re going to have fairly clear sailing ahead of us.”

About Dean

I drank my share of pale lagers back in college in the 80's but I always wanted to try more, often drinking the 'dark' versions of beer as that was the only interesting thing on tap. I got into homebrewing in the early 90's meeting a lot of great people and then really started learning about beer and how to judge it. Then into the 00's I started branching out with beer and started to deal with beer education and paring beer with food which I did with some restaurants, even beating out wine in a beer vs. wine dinner. I don't try and push beer on people but if they ask questions and really want to listen, I can talk for hours about the subject. Now we come to today, and beer scene in the Fargo / Moorhead area and North Dakota is starting to boom. FMBeer was created with the help of MNBeer.com so people in the F/M area have a single place where they can find out more about good beer, from a calendar of events to lists of local breweries and bars. FMBeer is also a place to learn more about craft beer for those just branching out and a resource to come back to.