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Board of Adjustment Approves Special Use Permits for AMB Hard Cider Winery, Oak Street Apartment Building

By Jesse Wood

Jan. 14, 2015. Last week, the Boone Board of Adjustment approved two special use permit applications pertaining to a hard cider winery by Appalachian Mountain Brewery on Daniel Boone Drive and the construction of an apartment building on Oak Street property formerly by Watauga County.

Sean Spiegelman, CEO of Appalachian Mountain Brewery, requested a modification to a special use permit to make hard cider at 289 Daniel Boone Drive.

A subsidiary of Appalachian Mountain Brewery, Hard Mountain Cider has already leased 3,300 square feet of operation space on Daniel Boone Drive, and the corporation has the required permitting from the Alcohol Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau to produce the cider.

Last month, Spiegelman said that production of hard cider from North Carolina apples could begin onsite at the end of January or the beginning of February.

For more on this operation in the works, read a prior article here.

The Boone Board of Adjustment also approved of a special use permit application for the construction of an apartment building on Oak Street.

In August, the Watauga County Board of Commissioners accepted a $160,000 offer from developer John Winkler for county-owned property located at 347 Oak St. The bid successfully made its way through the upset process, and now Winkler has plans of constructing an apartment building on the site with a proposed 10 efficiency units and 10 one-bedroom units.

The commissioners originally put the property, which was obtained by the county for financing obligations of New River Behavioral Healthcare during its well-documented demise three years ago, on the market for $425,000.

With no suitors, the county dropped the asking price to $210,000 and received some interest. However, no one bid more than 160,000 for the property.