A developer is redeveloping a building in downtown Huntington where much of the building will be demolished, and has said he will preserve the facade of Huntington's first fire house.
Developer John Kean has teamed up with the building owner Alan Fromkin to transform 235 Main Street, which is Fromkin's property, into a mixed-used development that has space for both apartments and retailers in its four stories. The total square footage of the project comes to 271,836, as a result of joining five contiguous lots Fromkin owns. The two say the project will help with the parking problems in downtown Huntington, and will not be much taller than its current height. The building's height and parking issues were of concern to some residents.
Fromkin and Kean want to raze every structure on all five lots, and then ask for variances in zoning to account for the height of the building, the fact it will have mixed-uses on the ground floor, and the parking structure. Developers of projects like this can use poster printing to create renderings of the final construction.
In 2016, historians asked the town board to designate the fire house as a historic structure, but the measure did not come to a vote, which meant it was denied by default. Huntington Historical Society officials are therefore pleased the developer has agreed to preserve the facade, and is going on to recreate the way the doors looked when the station was constructed in 1911.