Thank You for 16 Great Years!

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UPDATE 

I just want to thank everyone for the wonderful cards, letters and hugs. I went to surgery Oct 7 and got home on Oct 16.

One surgery turned into three, but I came out the other side.

It's great to be back home in Aurora and we're looking forward to a full recovery over the next few months, rough spots and all.

I've had time to reflect back and honestly it all happened so fast that there isn't much to tell.

In reality, cancer hasn't taken anything from me that prevents me from leading a happy life. I have my family and friends and people that care about me. I've lived a pretty full life doing the things that I love, with the people I love. My life has changed, I'm ok with it.

I look forward to seeing you all again after the first of the year!

A Message from Dan, Lani and Joe -

Sunday, September 15 is our last day of operations for Great Crescent Brewery. We are truly grateful for the support of our customers, community, Main Street and the City of Aurora through the past 16 years – we don’t know where all the time went. 

You know that we try to keep social media posts limited to business and keep our personal lives as far apart from it as we can. In this case though, we think it would be unfair to those who have supported us throughout the years to not communicate why we are closing without notice.

We are very fortunate to be in a position that we can decide when to say we want to move on, which isn’t something afforded to every business – large and small. We could have kept the brewery open but we decided a new project is in order. More on that later in this message. We had a plan to go through to the end of the year and retire. But sometimes things don’t go as planned and the timeline gets moved. 

During the past few months Dan had been working through what he believed was a minor medical problem, but in a short period of time it bloomed into cancer. If you have any experience with cancer you likely know that once it enters your life, it takes charge until it can be eliminated.

Dan has the support of our family and a very skilled team at UC that, together, we are mapping out the road to getting him back to health. There was no clear answer on what generated the cancer. The only option for this cancer is surgery and he has already started the process of getting ready. Without going into too much information we decided as a family we couldn’t run the brewery and get through the surgery and recovery, which is an extensive amount of time.

As for the future - the need for a small grocery store to serve the community became evident after Tandy’s left Aurora. We have a new store planned in the brewery building along Mechanic Street. We are looking forward to seeing you at the Aurora Marketplace in early 2025.

The taproom space is for lease at this point. If you have restaurant ownership and/or management experience and want to explore the options in Aurora contact Dan via email – dvalas1@comcast.net.

Thank You and remember – “Good Things Happen in Aurora”