Iconic downtown Oceanside fire station No. 1 to be replaced

Feb. 17--Oceanside's oldest fire station, a downtown icon designed by noted architect Irving Gill, could at last be replaced under a financing plan being worked out by city officials.

The city bought property on Civic Center Drive, a little more than one block away, in 2004 for $1.6 million with plans to build the new station there. The old firehouse was to become part of its next-door neighbor, the Oceanside Art Museum, which occupies the original Oceanside City Hall, also designed by Gill.

But so far nothing's happened, and the need for a modern fire station is growing as more and more multi-story buildings go up in neighborhoods near the pier.

"We have to do something," Mayor Peter Weiss said Thursday.

The new station is also needed because the existing structure is not earthquake safe, he said.

Two more long-sought projects are in the works -- replacing the run-down restrooms and a police substation built in the 1930s near the beach band shell, and constructing a competitive aquatics center on the city's El Corazon property, which would include Oceanside's first new public swimming pools since the 1950s.

The new fire station and beach buildings would be constructed with up to $20 million borrowed from the city's investment portfolio, under a plan the City Council discussed Feb. 6. The loans would be repaid with money from Measure X, the half-cent sales tax approved by Oceanside voters in November.

A different source of money is needed for the aquatics center, which was not one of the priorities outlined for voters in Measure X. Instead, the council proposed issuing bonds to cover the costs of the swim center.

All three of the projects have been in the planning and design stages for years.

Fire Station No. 1, on Pier View Way, opened in 1929 and originally housed both the city's police and fire headquarters.

The police department moved out long ago, and today the building is one of eight Oceanside fire stations. Firefighters bunk in the area that was once the police department's second-story holding cells, and the Oceanside Historical Society has an office and a small museum in a corner on the first floor.

City officials say the old station is ill-equipped for blazes in the six- and seven-story buildings that have popped up downtown.

A seismic retrofit would cost $5.5 million, Weiss said, and the building would still be too small to house the equipment needed to fight fires in tall buildings. The city's nearest ladder-truck is miles away at Station No. 7 in the San Luis Rey Valley, which can add minutes to response times.

"We are talking about public safety to the nth degree," said Councilwoman Esther Sanchez, and public safety was one of the main reasons the city put Measure X on the ballot.

"We are not prepared for a fire in a mid-rise building or even in an ... underground parking lot," Sanchez said during the council's funding discussion.

When the city bought the Civic Center Drive property, a single large lot with two buildings on it, the plan was to finish construction in two to five years. However, a grant application for construction money fell through, and the city has been looking for money ever since.

Measure X appears to be the answer, both for the fire station and for a separate project that would replace the beach restrooms, a maintenance building and a police substation, all near the pier, and two separate restroom buildings elsewhere along The Strand.

Designs for the restroom buildings were completed in 2011, and at the time there was talk of finishing construction in 2012. But that effort also was sidelined by the struggle to find funding.

Councilman Chris Rodriguez, elected to his first term in November, said he thinks the plan to borrow construction money in advance of Measure X revenue is premature.

He and a few residents who spoke at the Feb. 6 meeting said the city should wait for the projects to be reviewed by the seven-member Measure X oversight committee, which was only appointed this month..

"The projects are great," Rodriguez said, but at this point only estimates are available for construction costs and and sales tax revenue.

"I want to see the numbers start coming in," he said. "We need to do this the right way."

The half-cent sales tax takes effect April 1 and is expected to generate more than $80 million in revenue for the city over its seven-year life, according to a city staff report.

The fire station and the beach restrooms project are expected to cost at least $8 million each.

Mayor Weiss, who proposed the funding plan, said those two projects were the city's highest priorities, that they should be covered by Measure X, and that the city needs to get started on them.

Also, other funding sources such as development fees have come through in recent years to help pay for all the projects, Weiss said.

The aquatics center, while a high priority for many residents, was not included in the public safety improvements identified in the spending plan for Measure X.

Construction of the aquatics center is expected to cost more than $18 million, and the city has about half the money in hand. Detailed plans for a site next to the El Corazon Senior Center were approved almost three years ago.

However, in 2017 the City Council voted not to issue bonds for the rest of the construction money, in part because of questions about how the city could afford an estimated $1 million in annual maintenance costs for the swim center.

Maintenance costs did not appear to be a concern this month, when the council unanimously supported the idea of using bond money to build the swim complex.

Funding plans for each of the projects will have to return to the council for final approval.

philip.diehl@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @phildiehl

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