Menomonee Fall’s historic former fire station No. 1 building will serve a new purpose next year when a restaurant opens at the N88 W16631 Appleton Ave. location in late summer of 2018.
The Village of Menomonee Falls board on Monday approved a tax incremental financing (TIF) agreement between the village and the restaurant’s operator Falls Fire LLC– a business owned by restauranteur Chris Leffler, owner of Leff’s Lucky Town in Wauwatosa and Revere’s Wells Street Tavern in Delafield.
Leffler was not immediately available for comment.
The TIF agreement allows Leffler to purchase the building for $1, under the condition that he will renovate and preserve it as a historical landmark. Construction will tentatively being in January or February of 2018, village manager Mark Fitzgerald said.
The former fire station has been a public building since it was built in 1929 and served as a fire station from 1966 until 2015, when a new fire station building was constructed at N84 W18989 Menomonee Ave.
“Our goal here was to get adaptive use and historic protection of the building and to get a restaurant operator who met our objectives,” Fitzgerald said.
Ever since the building had been vacated, the village wanted it to be a restaurant and had been looking for about 18 months for a restaurant operator to fill the space, Fitzgerald said.
“It’s not easy to try to find uses for a building like this because of the history requirements we have to work through,” Fitzgerald said. “We had to find the right kind of individual who met our objectives and I think we did that well with Chris.”
