Main Street in Fort Mill getting ready to welcome town’s first brewpub

If you appreciate craft beer, your local options are about to double.

Amor Artis Brewing owners are working to open a downtown brewery on Main Street. It will be the second brewpub to open in the Fort Mill area, but the first one inside town limits.

The farmhouse-style brewery will open in the former Dave’s Comics space and another building that juts out onto Confederate Street. Work has been underway for months to re-purpose the shop into a seven-barrel brew pub that will include patio seating.

Two adjacent Main Street storefronts, the old Knife Shop and the former studio for Halcyon Hills Photography, also are being renovated for a new restaurant, Improper Pig.

Amor Artis is a family affair, according to Travis Tolson, a 2004 Fort Mill High School graduate who co-owns the business with his brother Steve. Wife Khara is also a part of the business, and the Tolsons’ father is an investor, he said. Like his friend and former classmate Charles Bergman – who opened the area’s first brewpub, Full Spectrum, on Carolina Place – Tolson started as a home brewer.

“He’s been a great help through this process,” Tolson said about Bergman, including offering guidance navigating regulatory hurdles.

The Tolsons were a military family on the move every few years. Their stop in Fort Mill made a lasting impression, and Tolson’s parents eventually settled in the area. A brewer at Wicked Weed Brewing in Asheville, N.C., for two years, Tolson has lived as far away as Alaska, where Khara was stationed while serving with the U.S. Coast Guard.

“I want to get close to family,” he said.

Scouting Fort Mill for a spot to open his brewery was not difficult, even if its not the same Fort Mill he left more than a decade ago.

“It’s not exactly a small town anymore, not the way it was,” Tolson said. “But it still has a small town feel.”

Some of this not so small of a town will be going into Amor Artis beers.

“We’re looking to locally source ingredients as much as possible,” Tolson said, including malts from North Carolina.

But some flavors will taste even more like home.

“We’re in communication with The Peach Stand, and we’re getting 150 pounds of (Springs Farm) blackberries this week for our blackberry sour,” he said. “We’ll also be using local peaches and melons. As much local (produce) as we can.”

Brews featuring sour and fruity notes won’t be all Amor Artis Brewing serves.

“Of course, we’ll have all your typical IPAs and stouts, too,” Tolson said.

Tolson, who bought a house for his family near downtown in the Whiteville Park neighborhood, expects Amor Artis Brewing to open by the end of the year, or perhaps as early as October, he said. The brewpub is not planing to emphasize food, but is looking to partner in some way with Improper Pig, which will be sharing the patio space.

“We’re talking about doing something that could involve customers ordering from them with an iPad and having the food passed through a window, or something like that,” Tolson said.

To Fort Mill Mayor Guynn Savage, Amor Artis means another reason to stay local.

“Any time something trendy opens here that gives our residents a local option as opposed to having to go to another county or a another state, that’s a good thing,” she said.

“It certainly makes downtown a more interesting destination.”

The cherry on top of the cake for Savage is a former resident moving back to town and investing in the revitalization of Main Street.

“I love that’s it a local person,” she said.

This story was originally published July 6, 2017 at 5:45 PM with the headline "Main Street in Fort Mill getting ready to welcome town’s first brewpub."