For eight years, the building at the end of EMS T16 Lane sat quiet. Boaters idled past it on the way to somewhere else. The parking lot, when it had cars in it at all, never seemed to have them in the right spots. Pie Eyed Petey's, the restaurant and marina that used to anchor that stretch of shoreline, closed its doors in 2018, and the property changed hands more than once after that without anyone quite figuring out what it should become.
This summer it became the busiest new address on the lake, and it happened almost overnight.
The Long Vacancy Behind a Fast Opening
The short version is that HopLore Brewing, the small-batch brewery that had spent nine years landlocked in the Old Leesburg Mill between Goshen and Warsaw since opening there in May 2017, finally got on the water. The slightly longer version is more interesting, because it explains why this particular building sat empty for so long and why the county spent the first two months of 2026 arguing about what should replace it.
Owner Stefan King and his wife Jen have lived on Lake Tippecanoe for years, which meant King had been watching the old Petey's site sit vacant the entire time he was brewing beer nobody could reach by boat. He spent roughly a year negotiating with the property's newer owners before the deal came together, then compressed four months of prep work into a stretch that ended with 20 to 22-hour days in the two weeks before opening. There was no ribbon cutting. The team simply posted "we're open" on Facebook and let the boats find them.
They found them fast. According to a detailed account of the move, HopLore Tiki & Taps went from six staff members to 36 in its first month on the water. The kitchen sold 32 pounds of smoked peel-and-eat shrimp in a single day, a menu item that didn't exist at the old mill location. Smashburgers joined the lineup. Pizza is coming in the next few weeks. Customers arrive the way you'd expect on Tippecanoe: some by car, plenty by boat, tying up at the dock that now runs along the edge of the patio.
Why the County Spent Two Meetings on a Parking Lot
None of this happened without a fight over pavement.
Before HopLore could open, the Kosciusko County Board of Zoning Appeals had to sign off on a variance, because the site plan called for 55 parking spaces in a commercial district that technically requires 72. At the January 13 meeting, board members raised the same concern longtime lake residents already had in the back of their minds. Board chairman Lee Harman recalled Petey's old parking situation as "being all over the place," which is about as polite a way as you can put it.
"This proposal is permitted use, point-blank."
That was attorney Steve Snyder, representing a second petitioner on the same property, at that same January hearing. Snyder wasn't just there for HopLore's parking. He was also representing developer James Anderson's plan to build a nine-unit condominium immediately east of the brewery, on the same overall property.
The board tabled both petitions for a month to let HopLore rework its parking layout and to give lake residents time to weigh in. By the February 10 meeting, King came back with angled parking on the building's west side and two separate rear entrances built around delivery traffic. The board approved it. Anderson withdrew all but one of his condo petitions, asking only for an exception allowing multi-family use in a commercial zone, and agreed to move the property line so the units sat farther from the shoreline. The shared dumpster came out of the plan too. Each condo unit gets its own trash can instead.
Not everyone at the January hearing was on board. Joe Lenon, president of the Lake Tippecanoe Property Owners Association, told the board the project would reduce lake frontage in a way that sets a precedent for funneling, the term lake communities use when one property owner opens shared access to a crowd of non-owners. Architect David Vie, who owns two nearby properties, was blunter about the condo renderings themselves.
"I'm an architect, and I know what I'm looking at."
Vie also made the point that if HopLore's petition had failed, the condo development could have simply expanded west to fill the space. In other words, something was going to get built on that lot no matter which way the board ruled. The only real question was whether it would come with a working kitchen attached.
What's Actually Different at the Dock
If you've driven past in the last few weeks, here's what's changed:
- The building itself is the same footprint, but roughly 2,300 square feet of it is now restaurant space, with the rest set aside for brewing equipment.
- The old boat ramp is gone, part of the tradeoff that let HopLore add angled parking on that side of the lot.
- Boats now tie up at a dock along the patio instead of using a public launch.
- Brewing still happens back at the Warsaw location for now, but King expects to shift production to the lake site around Labor Day, which would nearly double the brew floor to 3,400 square feet.
That last detail matters if you've been enjoying the current menu and wondering whether the beer selection is about to shrink or grow. King's team is already working on a 4.2 percent ABV dry-hopped cream ale they're calling, with the kind of humor that seems to run through the whole operation, simply "Beer." Once brewing moves to the lake, expect more small-batch experiments to show up faster, since the whole operation will finally be under one roof for the first time since 2017.
Two Miles Down the Shoreline
If a stop at the dock is only the first half of your evening, Tippy Creek Winery sits about two miles away and has quietly become the county's answer to a wine bar. It's Kosciusko County's first and only farm winery, blending and bottling everything on site, with a rotating lineup that includes wine slushies, hard cider, and sangria depending on the season. Visitors who've made the two-stop loop between HopLore and Tippy Creek in the same afternoon describe exactly the kind of low-key, unhurried lake circuit that doesn't show up on any tourism board's list but ends up being how most residents actually spend a Saturday.
That's really the story underneath the zoning hearings and the shrimp numbers. Lake Tippecanoe didn't get a flashy new attraction built for out-of-towners. It got a dock back, on a stretch of shoreline that had been sitting empty since before some current residents moved in, run by someone who was already one of the lake's own. The building spent eight years as a question mark. This summer it turned into the answer, staff count and all.
Whether the next building on that same parcel, the nine-unit condo the county approved back in February, changes the character of that corner again is a conversation lake residents are still having among themselves. For now, the dock is full, the shrimp keeps selling out, and by Labor Day the whole operation will finally be brewing where it's been serving all along.
If watching a corner of your own lake or neighborhood change like this has you thinking about what your property is worth in the middle of it, The Barrera Team is happy to talk through it, starting with a free home valuation whenever you're ready.
