Exclusive: Morean Arts Center plans to build new five-story building to expand offerings, relocate Chihuly Collection
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Each year, The Morean Arts Center welcomes more than 90,000 visitors to its downtown St. Pete property. Now, the arts hub looks to the future with expansion plans that would greatly increase its footprint on Central Avenue.
The Morean Arts Center, which contains an amazing contemporary art gallery and offers art classes, is in the early planning stages for a new five-story state-of-the-art building.
The plans call for demolishing the current 27,000-square-foot facility at 719 Central Avenue to make way for the new building, which would contain more gallery space, offices, parking, and an expanded Chihuly Collection.
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For years, the second floor of a downtown St. Pete beer and wine bar has been used mostly for private events and overflow seating.
This weekend, Green Bench Brewing will turn that space into a new concept of its own.
Upstairs at Webb’s will begin service Friday, September 25th, at 4 p.m. above Webb’s City Cellar, Green Bench Brewing’s specialty beer and wine bar at 1133 Baum Avenue North.
The new bar and lounge will launch during Green Bench’s 13th anniversary celebration, offering a beverage program built around a somewhat unexpected idea: texture.
“The menu itself is completely built around the concept of texture and how you can use texture to manipulate the experience with products,” Green Bench Brewing owner and brewer Khris Johnson said in a conversation with St. Pete Rising. “It’s supposed to be exploration-focused, a deep dive into not just products, but service and hospitality centered around beer that you just don’t get anywhere else.”
That idea will shape nearly every drink served upstairs.
A beer poured downstairs or next door at Green Bench may also be available upstairs, but it will not necessarily taste or feel the same.