When developer Danny Yancey was approached about buying the massive old Martin Stove building in Huntsville, he had to give it some thought.

“My first response was, ‘What in the world am I going to do with it?’” Yancey said.

He walked around and looked at the “bones” of the 226,000-square-foot building on Governors Drive between Memorial Parkway and I-565. He learned about large-scale industrial redesign projects called adaptive reuse, such as Ponce City in Atlanta. He did marketing studies.

“The vision started coming to me,” he said. “The old building was kind of speaking to us and saying ‘Here’s what you need to do,’” he said.

In 2016 the clock started on his five-year plan to turn the old industrial site into a complex of restaurants, offices, event space and places to “play.” Spur Corp., Star Lab Cyber Security, Onyx Aerospace and Liberty Learning have moved in. Burn Collective workout studio and Oak River Design group open this spring.

Mazzara’s Italian Kitchen and Pourhouse wine bar are expected to open the first week in May in an “urban food garden” called the Hub — the first of its kind here. Fresko Grille, Kamado Ramen and Oh Crepe are scheduled for May. Taqueria El Cazador, a food truck operating for years in the parking lot, will move inside.

Mazzara’s and Pourhouse will be managed by the Mells, who operate popular Purveyor downtown.

Hub restaurants adjoin a common area opening April 13 with bocce, outdoor ping-pong, foot billiards, outdoor tables, rooftop seating and fire pits.

Nine restaurants will operate at Stovehouse, plus a coffeehouse with “an exciting concept,” he said. A brew pub will be “the first one of its kind in Huntsville.”

A section called Royal includes 10,000 square feet of event space and suites. Belle has 5,000 square feet of event space. The Assembly is a 20,000-square-foot hall that can be open-air or heated and cooled for conferences, markets or concerts. Small retail spaces and event venues are already leasing.

The Courtyard is the “central green belt,” with a rain wall, ambient music and trees. The Hill will have a bar and mingling space. Gaslight Alley opens next year with boutiques, cobblestone walks and flickering gas lamps.

Starting the first week of May, the Company Store will sell sodas, candies, gifts and vintage toys.

“Because of our design in opening up the roofs in areas and creating interior courtyards, we’re now down to about 165,000 of rentable space,” he said. “That does not include our courtyard areas.” The demand for event spaces has been “great,” he said.

The massive makeover should be complete in 24 months, Yancey said.

Road improvements will link Stovehouse to the breweries and restaurants at Campus No. 805 two blocks away to create an entertainment district with walking and biking access.

“This gives us an opportunity to have festivals we’re bringing across two campuses,” he said.

“I had a conversation with the city planning folks and said, ‘This is our vision. We want to help revitalize this side of town. If we work together — the two big properties on Governors Drive, what could we accomplish?,’” Yancey said.

Danny Yancey and his development partners are converting the former Martin Stove plant on Governors Drive between Memorial Parkway and I-565 into a mix of offices, event space and restaurants called The Stovehouse.

Yancey hopes Stovehouse will “put a new face” on a pie-shaped slice of west Huntsville from roughly I-565 to Johnson Road and the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

“The folks over in the west side of Huntsville are very prideful, honest, hardworking people,” he said.

“We want to create a work/play atmosphere that is family oriented, safe and clean,” he said, and a place for “everything from weddings to concerts to corporate events.”

Combined live-work-play space is the trend in revitalization now. Yancey said the “live” part is still affordable in west Huntsville — for now.

“People are buying these houses and fixing them up. The houses around this project have doubled in price just since I announced it.

“You will look up 10 years from now and you will not recognize Westside. You watch. It’s going to be the cool place to live and be,” Yancey said.

Yancey also bought the adjacent 2.8 acres, bringing the site to almost 12 acres. Annexing the old tax island into the city allowed alcohol sales.

‘Great opportunity’

Yancey is a former mortgage banker from Ripley, Mississippi., who moved to Huntsville in the 1980s. He did residential development and started an HR company called Job Source LLC.

“I’ve always looked at this part of town and realized this is the gateway to downtown — Governors Drive. I’ve always wondered to myself, why in the world is this area not developed already? What a great opportunity there is stuck between I-565 and state highway 431, or Governors Drive.

“I’m a visionary. My wife will tell you that.”

Michelle McMullen, president of the West Huntsville Civic Association, hopes Stovehouse “will become a focal point along what should become one of the most impressive gateways into the heart of downtown.

“West Huntsville was originally a booming area that comprised West Clinton, Lowe Mill, Merrimack and other smaller West Huntsville mills and their villages, an area known collectively as the Town of West Huntsville,” McMullen said.

“The area was one of Huntsville’s first suburbs and a small town in and of itself, an area that we now call Downtown West.”

Yancey and his team created their own catchphrase: “Westside: Pride. Progress. Preservation.”

In Nashville and Chattanooga, “in identifying the neighborhoods within the city and giving them an identity and promoting those, something miraculous happened. They started competing with each other,” he said.

Part of Yancey’s vision is keeping alive the history of the 90-year-old building.

“The name Stovehouse obviously comes from this always being a stove factory,” Yancey said.

Rome Stove made the Electric Belle, the first electric stove in the South, starting in 1929. In the late 1930s Martin Stamping and Stove produced gas stoves until it was temporarily converted into a bomb crate manufacturer during World War II. The company LSINC and an industrial wood pellet stove manufacturer were the most recent occupants.

Project partners are Crunkleton Commercial Real Estate Group, Joe Still Building Co. and Nashville-based Centric Architecture.

Updated April 9, 2019, to reflect that the Company Store, Mazzara’s and the Pourhouse will now open the first week of May.