GOWANUS — First shuffleboard, now fancy ice cream.
The Prospect Heights ice cream shop Ample Hills Creamery is opening a new location this spring at 305 Nevins St., just down the block from the new Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club, which opens at the end of this month.
The creamery's new location will be a "2-story ice cream paradise" with a retail counter and a manufacturing facility, the company said in a statement.
Ample Hills chose the 3,600-square-foot corner building because it could accommodate more customers and more ice cream making than the original Vanderbilt Avenue shop, said marketing director Lauren Kaelin.
"We wanted some place where we could get a lot of bang for our buck," Kaelin said. "As it stands now we’re making all of our ice cream in an 150-square-foot kitchen and in order to keep up with demand we have to make ice cream 24 hours a day during the summer months."
The Nevins Street facility will quadruple Ample Hills' capacity and supply all of the ice cream for the Prospect Heights shop, the Gowanus location, and the creamery's new kiosk and mobile carts in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Ample Hills' existing store can squeeze in about 25 people at a time and often generates 45-minute lines during hot weather, Kaelin said. The Gowanus outpost will fit many more people and will have an outside deck, as well as indoor and outdoor seating.
The Prospect Heights shop sells 15 flavors at a time, but the new Gowanus location will be able to offer two dozen flavors for sale. The Nevins Street shop would also eventually be able to sell ice cream by the pint and in wholesale quantities, Kaelin said. There will also be space for private parties.
The new location was first reported by Serious Eats.
Ample Hills is known for its locally sourced ingredients and unique flavors such as "salted crack caramel." All of the ice cream at its Prospect Heights shop is made in-house and customers can watch the process.
The Gowanus store is expected to open in May. The city approved a permit for a $374,000 renovation on the space in November 2013. The Nevins Street building was built in 1931 and was once an iron works, according to city records.
It's right across the street from a sprawling warehouse building formerly used by Verizon. That structure was purchased for $14 million in December 2012 by a real estate firm with a background in luxury residential development.
