MacDowell’s Brew Kitchen Agrees to Buy “Beach” Property

MacDowell’s Brew Kitchen, Leesburg’s “beachfront” restaurant and nanobrewery, will keep its sandy patio after agreeing to purchase a small piece of land from the town following a series of zoning disputes.

The Leesburg Town Council approved the sale of the 1,100-square-foot tract of sand-covered land to MacDowell’s for $24,000, The Washington Post reports.

A resident filed a complaint alleging that MacDowell’s had not received proper approval from the town’s Board of Architectural Review to build the sandy lot. Town zoning inspectors later determined the restaurant was built on a residential lot and part of the “beach” area was zoned as a public right-of-way, barring the sale of alcohol on the property, The Washington Post reports.

The complaints prompted MacDowell’s to launch a “Save Our Beach” petition that gathered more than 2,300 online signatures. Leesburg officials agreed to amend the town code to allow the sale of alcohol on the property.

Though the brewpub now officially owns the land, a rezoning application that would rezone the property from residential to commercial use is still pending and expected to come before the council for discussion Aug. 12. The Board of Architectural Review’s decision would then follow the rezoning approval, according to the brewpub’s co-owner Gordon MacDowell.