McIntyre Owners Abandon Redevelopment Plans, Announce New England’s First Year-Round Spirit Halloween

PORTSMOUTH, NH — Following years of redevelopment proposals, public input sessions and increasingly elaborate architectural renderings, the owners of Portsmouth’s McIntyre Building announced Monday they have determined that restoring the property would be “way too much work” and will instead convert the entire site into New England’s first year-round Spirit Halloween.

“Frankly, the answer was staring us in the face,” said project spokesman Brad Scarborough. “Portsmouth loves Halloween, the McIntyre is enormous and mostly empty, and they’re tearing down the Mall at Fox Run. Spirit needed somewhere to go.”

“Salem can suck it,” Scarborough added. “Portsmouth is the Halloween capital of New England now.”

Developers said the plan, tentatively called Spirit Halloween: McIntyre Square, surprisingly incorporates nearly every major feature requested by residents during years of public charrettes and community meetings.

“You wanted flexible year-round public space? Halloween is now year-round,” Scareborough said. “You wanted short-term vendors? Nobody knows more about short-term retail than Spirit Halloween.”

The proposed ground floor will include rotating local vendors, a costume marketplace, community gathering areas and a “maker space” featuring hot glue guns, foam latex, fake blood and a workbench where residents can finally construct whatever the hell they were trying to describe during three minutes of public comment.

Plans also preserve pedestrian passageways through the property, now redesigned as immersive haunted corridors populated by motion-activated skeletons modeled after Portsmouth residents screaming at public-comment podiums.

One animatronic figure reportedly shouts, “I’VE LIVED HERE FOR 37 YEARS!” whenever visitors approach, while another repeatedly demands to know whether the Planning Board has adequately considered parking.

Developers say the building’s austere federal architecture requires almost no alteration.

“We showed our Halloween consultants photographs of the McIntyre and they said, ‘Perfect. Don’t touch it,’” Scarborough said. “We were going to spend millions making the building less ominous and then realized ominous is literally our business model.”

The central plaza will feature a 14-foot animatronic pumpkin demon, outdoor seating, public art and a seasonal market, satisfying longstanding demands that the site provide a vibrant civic gathering space.

Asked how a Halloween store could possibly activate the plaza during Portsmouth’s notoriously cold winter months, Scarborough pointed to a six-foot werewolf marked 70% off.

“Look at that thing,” he said. “That’s February programming.”

Residents greeted the announcement enthusiastically, noting that Portsmouth has spent decades quietly becoming one of the most aggressively Halloween-oriented small cities in America.

“We already have thousands of people packed downtown every October 31st watching drummers, giant puppets, witches, skeletons and a guy riding a bicycle dressed as some kind of glowing squid,” said resident Carol DeRosa. “Meanwhile Salem has a witch museum and 400 stores selling the same pentagram mug. I think we can take them.”

Portsmouth Halloween Parade organizers are reportedly considering rerouting the annual procession directly through the McIntyre, where participants would receive 15% off all inflatable ghosts and complimentary fog-machine fluid.

The Historic District Commission is expected to approve the project following one final design change requiring developers to reduce the rooftop skeleton from 47 feet to 42 feet, replace its illuminated red eyes with historically appropriate amber ones, and move it six inches farther back from the cornice.

Public comment on those changes is expected to continue through 2034.