Extensive renovations were required to make the Alamo Theatre building a structure capable of supporting the needs of Northeast Historic Film. The original interior of the building was gutted in 1956 to make way for an A&P supermarket, and one of NHF's first goals for the building was to return community movie-going to the area. The construction began in the basement and proceeded up from there. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation made a grant of $20,000 to assist with the initial renovations, which involved digging down to the ground and removing 60 truckloads of earth to install a new drainage system.

On May 1, 1999, the Alamo Theatre reopened and revived the tradition of a Main Street cinema in Bucksport.

NHF's next major undertaking was the Conservation Center. Also referred to as "The Cube," this building is the first of its kind in the Northeast and one of only a handful nationwide. The construction drawings were executed by John Gordon of Bucksport, the architect of record, based on a conceptual design by architect Terry Rankine. Groundbreaking for the $1.8 million state-of-the-art structure took place on June 13, 2002, and in November, 2003 NHF transferred its moving image collections into the new climate-controlled vaults.