VOORHEESVILLE — The village of Voorheesville is looking for resident feedback on its purchase earlier this year of 18 South Main Street, a location steeped in local history. 

The village has scheduled a public forum for Nov. 12 to solicit input for potential uses for the building.

The 18 South Main Street building had been home to W.W. Crannell Lumber for nearly a century prior to Phillips Hardware’s 1993 purchase of the property for $175,000. 

The village acquired the property for $170,000 at the start of the year, when the 19th-Century structure had an assessed value of about $206,000 and has a full-market value of about $294,000.

The building has additional historical value as the once home of Voorheesville’s first president, whom residents called Mayor Frank Bloomingdale in 1899, when the village incorporated.

The purchase allowed Voorheesville to make good on a promise to increase parking in the village center to accommodate new businesses in the area. 

In 2023, the not-for-profit Business for Good helmed by village native Ed Mitzen opened a coffee shop and restaurant at the intersection of Main Street and Voorheesville Avenue. 

Parking had been an issue since the project was first proposed in April 2021. The two Mitzen restaurants needed 83 parking spaces to comply with village code, but were approved with fewer than 40 spots.

The first part of the village plan to increase parking involved adding parking capacity at two Village Hall lots, from 27 to approximately 50 spaces.

The purchase of 18 South Main added 40 public spots and was a textbook example of the village implementing recommendations made in its 2018 comprehensive plan: finding parking spaces to attract businesses and their customers to the village center.

Voorheesville was initially unsure about what it could and should do with the property. After an earlier visual assessment, the village arrived at the decision that the building wasn’t worth saving. But further inspection revealed the building’s “bones” were structurally sound, Mayor Rich Straut said during a recent board of trustees meeting

Also during that same Oct. 28 meeting Dennis Sullivan, the village’s historian and also a columnist for The Enterprise, suggested the structure could be used as a historical site. He envisioned it as a place for tours and viewings, perhaps integrated into a historic walk for children.

Preserving the building, Sullivan said, maintains a “living connection to the past.”

Things are already happening on South Main Street, as the village’s department of public works has performed site work on the property. The department has cleaned and pumped out the building’s water-filled basement, and, in anticipation of future abatement, an asbestos survey has already taken place. 

To help pay for the project, the village is eligible and likely to receive two $100,000 grants — one through state Senator Patricia Fahy’s office and the other from Fahy’s replacement in the Assembly, Gabriella Romero — Straut said on Oct. 28, which, when combined with existing village funds set aside for the project, gives Voorheesville a quarter-million-dollar jumping-off point.