Day: March 28, 2022

If you rebuild it, they will come.

That’s what Speculator officials hope once a 48-foot-tall fire tower is planted in the village near the nature trail.

Mayor Jeannette Barrett said Speculator has been interested in such a structure “for quite awhile” and hopes to have the Makomis tower up and open by July 4.

Part of Speculator’s interest in restoring a tower began several years ago when Jonathan Lane, the owner of Charlie John’s, and his father bought a fire tower to put up in town, Barrett said. The project never materialized, but Barrett said when she became mayor, getting a tower up in the village was a priority.

“It’s meant to be a tourism draw, which is the basis of our economy,” she said.

A $100,000 grant from the state Department of Environmental Conservation and another $10,000 in funding from the Adirondack Foundation got the project off the ground. Speculator’s contribution is $55,000, of which $28,000 has already been raised, said Ryan Marshall, the chairman of the tower’s fundraising committee.