Fate of Fire Station No. 6 in hands of Fremont City Council
The Fremont City Council will decide Tuesday whether an old firehouse should be demolished to make way for apartments, townhouses and retail stores in the city’s historic Centerville district.
Despite the city’s Historical Architectural Review Board’s recommendation that Fire Station No. 6 be kept and renovated, the city’s planning commission voted last month to remove the firehouse, siding with residents who called it a blight.
Other residents, however, said the build-
ing at 37412 Fremont Blvd. should be preserved to serve as touchstone to history.
Sunnyvale-based Silicon-Sage Builders is proposing to put up 93 apartments with 26,000 square feet of ground-floor retail stores across several three- and four-story buildings on the northeast side Fremont Boulevard, between Parish Avenue and Peralta Boulevard.
The project would also include 72 three-story townhouses between the apartments and Jason Way to the east.
It would effectively reshape an entire city block, replacing the current low-slung buildings which house retail stores and restaurants, although some are vacant.
The historical board had favored an alternative version of the project, which would reconfigure the planned apartments just north of the firehouse “to reduce upper-floor bulk,” and would reduce the number of apartments from 93 to 81 and retail space by 1,000 square feet.
The fire station was built in 1954 before the city incorporated, and was decommissioned in 2008 after being deemed seismically unsafe.
At an Oct. 3, 2017 meeting, the City Council recommended that the developer rehabilitate the fire station, which qualifies for the California Register of Historical Resources because of its architectural significance.
The council also previously said the city should retain ownership so the updated building could someday be converted for a public use, such as a preschool.
However, later that month, a city-hired consultant found that even if the station is spared from demolition, erecting the proposed development around it “would still result in a substantial adverse change” to it because all the existing buildings around it would be removed, and much taller ones would replace them.
Also, any rehabilitation performed to increase the safety and stability of the station would lessen its historic value, a city report said.
The Fremont City Council meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, March 19, 2019, at 7 p.m. Meetings are held in City Council Chambers, 3300 Capitol Avenue, Building A.