The building that once housed one of Bangor’s longest operating businesses is for sale.
The former Fairmount Hardware, located at 569 Hammond St., is listed for $1.25 million and has been on the market for about a month, real estate agent Paul Cook said. There’s been significant interest in the 18,500-square-foot property, he said.
The store closed this spring after the death of longtime owner Sheldon Hartstone.
Cook is a 50% owner of the property, after he bought it with business partners in 2017. Fairmount Hardware operated rent-free there in the years since, allowing Hartstone to keep running the more than 70-year-old business, Cook said.
Harstone, who died Jan. 8 at 90 years old, took over the hardware store that his father opened in 1952. He and his siblings grew up helping at the store, his brother Fred Hartstone said previously.
Cook knew Sheldon Hartstone for 30 years, and knows Fred Hartstone. The brothers are wonderful people and Cook said he thinks the world of them.
In addition to the former Fairmount Hardware, redemption center and ice cream store space, there are eight apartments on the second floor and about 60 storage units at the rear of the building, Cook said. Those first-floor spaces are the only empty ones.
A new roof covers the hardware store, Cook said. There is also a sprinkler system already in place. Those systems can cost around $250,000 to install, Cook said. There’s also plenty of parking along the 13th Street side of the building.
Whoever buys the property will likely redevelop the roughly 5,000-square-foot first floor into a new business, or multiple, while making supplemental income from the apartments and storage units, Cook said.
“We think someone will eventually come along that’ll just love it,” Cook said.
