11/02/2026
Hi all - Given all the interest in the Historic Huntsville Depot, we wanted to offer an update here.
After the community outreach last summer/fall, we ended up with three overarching themes:
1. Preserve and adaptively re-use the Depot;
2. Maintain the Roundhouse as an event venue;
3. Work on developing the rest of the site as an addition to our parks inventory.
During the bulk of 2026, the City has been focused on what we call site and building stabilization. Most of the work on the Depot itself has been internal - dealing the HVAC issues, controlling water infiltration, repairing infrastructure, etc.
At the same time, our Preservationist (Katie Stamps) has been coordinating with SHPO (the State's preservation office) on the exterior work. The building envelope is covered by the existing historic easement, so she's working through what they need to make sure we're respecting that obligation as we're doing repairs.
Neither the two baggage buildings nor the canopy are part of the easement, but we do intend to preserve both. The canopy has been slowly deteriorating for some time - it has an internal drainage system that is not ideal - so we're coordinating with SHPO on how best to rehab or replicate that.
We mentioned this in a recent story on channel 54, and posted a short update on the webpage, but it bears repeating the anticipated timeline: We're going to continue with rehab of the Depot into 2027, while we also develop a few overall master plan options, based on what we heard last fall. We're targeting the Spring to roll those out for public comment. We will not make any decisions on how the Depot building itself gets repurposed until after a master plan has been formalized.
In the meantime, I encourage interested parties to keep an eye on the Depot web page: https://www.huntsvilleal.gov/huntsville-historic-depot-master-plan/. Any changes or updates will be posted there.
Thanks for the interest!
