The ground after brewing: the Omniplex, the Register, the demolitions — and the brand that would not come home

1972 — 2026

The site's second life: The brewery ground's post-brewing course is told in the Businesses section of this history and printed here at the size the makers' record needs. The complex passed to mixed light-industrial use as the Omniplex, and on 28 December 2000 the surviving plant — seven buildings and two structures on the nomination's count, on ground the library's account sizes at 110 of the original 136 acres — was listed on the National Register as the Muessel/Drewry's Brewery Historic District. Listing did not save it. The city deemed the buildings unsafe in 2016; the majority of the complex was demolished in 2017; and the remainder followed in demolitions of 2023–24, assisted by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, until one smokestack was left standing. In 2026 the city announced plans to develop the site for mixed-use housing, retail and offices. Of the plant that brewed from 1865 to 1972, the standing record in November 2026 is that: a listed district's ground, a smokestack, a park across the way that keeps the founder's name, and a development plan.

The brand's afterlife: The Drewry's name outlived its South Bend plant by decades, and its course belongs to this record because the plant made the brand American. Production moved to Heileman's other houses and in time to Evansville, where the Evansville Brewing Company brewed Drewrys until the last can in November 1997. In 2011 Francis "Frank" Manzo, a Chicago-area beer distributor, bought the brand and set out to bring it home: in October 2014 he announced a Drewry's return to South Bend, in the former Inwoods building at 425 South Michigan Street, with a planned capacity of about 100,000 barrels a year and an opening aimed at April 2015. It did not happen. The South Bend Tribune's later account is plain: after Manzo fell ill, the company "struggled to get the project off the ground" and the planned return "fell flat." The brand continued as a contract-brewed regional label — made in Monroe, Wisconsin, and then at Sand Creek Brewing in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, marketed from McHenry, Illinois, and sold in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Manitoba — which is its documented state in 2026: Drewry's survives, but no can of it has been brewed in South Bend since November 1972, and the one documented attempt to bring its brewing home failed. The plan is printed at its full documented size because it is this city's record too — an announced return, with an address, a capacity and a date, that illness and money undid.

Sources:

1. Businesses section of this history — the Omniplex use; the National Register listing of 28 December 2000; the 2016 unsafe determination; the demolitions of 2017 and 2023–24 with EPA assistance, one smokestack left; the city's 2026 mixed-use development announcement; St. Joseph County Public Library (monon.org) — the district at 110 of the original 136 acres.
2. Brew Your Own magazine, history of Drewrys (byo.com) — production's move after 1972 and the Evansville Brewing Company's last can of Drewrys, November 1997; South Bend Tribune reporting (2014 announcement; later retrospective) — the Inwoods building plan at 425 South Michigan Street, the April 2015 target, and the plan's failure after Manzo's illness; the brand's present contract production at Sand Creek Brewing, Black River Falls, Wisconsin, and its markets, from the company's public record as carried in the Tribune's and the trade's accounts.