County buys former site of firehouse in $1M deal
Marin County has purchased a 61-year-old building that once served as a fire station from the city of San Rafael for $1 million.
The building is on the east side of Highway 101 at 30 Joseph Court.
“There are a lot of demands on our fire department so I think having that facility available for our fire department to utilize will be the most immediate county need,” County Administrator Matthew Hymel told supervisors before the unanimous vote Tuesday.
“We think it is a good purchase given the expanded demands we’ve had on our fire department over the last several years,” Hymel said.
Supervisor Damon Connolly said, “I concur. It sounds like there could be some future evaluation of use as well.”
The building, the former San Rafael Fire Station 53, was built in 1960. It’s an approximately 4,000-square-foot structure located on a half-acre site. Hymel said that the building is in need of repair.
“It was an active fire station for many years,” Bill Guerin, San Rafael’s director of public works, wrote in an email, “but was deactivated in the early 1990s when San Rafael and Marinwood consolidated functions into Fire Stations 57 and 56.”
A San Rafael paramedic team operated out of the site for a time while San Rafael’s new Fire Station 57, at 3530 Civic Center Drive across from the Civic Center, was being built. That station opened in November 2019.
More recently, the building housed AmeriCorps volunteers. Currently, the Marin County Emergency Radio Authority is using the apparatus bay in the building to install new radio equipment in official vehicles as
“It’s a good opportunity for multiple purposes for the future.”
— Chief Jason Weber, Marin County Fire Department
a part of its radio modernization effort.
The county was given an option to buy the building for $1 million in 2016 as part of a lease agreement between Marin County and San Rafael. San Rafael agreed to pay the county $142,257 per year, increasing by 3% annually, for the 35,284 square feet of land that Fire Station 57 occupies, through 2056. Since the paramedic team at 30 Joseph Court was moved to the new Fire Station 57 when it opened, San Rafael no longer needed the building.
Hymel said the building might be used to house the Tamalpais fire crews, a group of seasonal workers who do fuel reduction when they’re not fighting fires. Marin County Fire Department Chief Jason Weber, however, said the building might not be large enough to house the entire 28-member Tamalpais crews.
“Our Tam crew has doubled in size,” Weber said. “We actually have two crews working seven days a week, so the space may not accommodate it completely. We may use it on an interim
basis.” Weber, however, said buying the building made sense because of the high cost of purchasing buildings.
“It’s a good opportunity for multiple purposes for the future,” he said.
Guerin said San Rafael will use the $1 million to help cover the costs of modernizing San Rafael Fire Station 54 in the Canal neighborhood and Fire Station 55 in Peacock Gap.