FireHall restaurant closes after two years

This article originally appeared in the Derry News
on September 12, 2007 and was written by Rebecca Correa

DERRY | For more than a century, it was a fire station. Then it became a bar. Now the fate of the building at 32 West Broadway is unknown.

The building's most recent occupant, FireHall Pub & Grille, closed for business one week ago today, and is being sold for $1.2 million.

Although it is uncertain who the next owner of the building might be, there are several interested buyers, according to Jack Dowd, executive director of Derry Economic Development Corp.

The building was purchased by Bonnie and Bob Hall for about $375,000 two years ago, after the town no longer needed the space for a fire station. The Halls remodeled the building to be a restaurant on the lower floor and a piano bar upstairs, keeping a firefighting theme throughout the building.

Over the past two years, the restaurant was the subject of litigation filed by neighbors who claimed that the process to approve the site wasn't legal, and therefore the restaurant had driven tenants from the apartments owned by Property Portfolio Group.

Reached yesterday, the Halls' lawyer, Ronald Caron of Manchester-based Brennan, Caron, Lenehan and Iacopino, said he could not comment on the status of that litigation.

The Halls did not return a phone call yesterday.

When the Halls bought the building from the town, a clause was included in the sales documents that would have given the town the first opportunity to buy the building back from them. But Dowd said that clause was eliminated when the Halls refinanced the building last year.

Town Councilor Brian Chirichiello said the property will need to remain a business because the area is zoned as a commercial district. He said he does not know who the interested buyers are, but he is curious to see what the building will become.

"With all the upgrades they did to turn it into a kitchen, I would assume it would make sense to keep it a similar type business," he said.

Dowd would not say if the interested buyers of the property are restaurant owners.