Old Boston Firehouse for sale-Interesting Article

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SETTING THEIR DREAMS ON FIRE

A LONG-DISUSED FIREHOUSE ATTRACTS INQUIRIES FROM 900 

 

Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company   

The Boston Globe 

April 11, 2004

 

FOR SALE: Redbrick firehouse with city views. Extra large garage, wrought-iron balconies and medieval-looking coat of arms. Needs a little TLC, but Maverick Square location ideal for business, community use, or home.

 

  If an ad were needed for the former Engine Company 40, that could do it.

        The old firehouse apparently doesn't need the extra hype, however. Little more than word of mouth and a terse mention on the City of Boston's website have stoked imaginations in the neighborhood and as far away as Atlanta and Cincinnati. Hundreds of people have expressed interest in buying the Sumner Street landmark, shuttered since 1981. Some would make the old firehouse their home. Others want to convert it into a community center, a church, an art gallery, a restaurant, office, or affordable living space. Quirkier ideas include opening an American Legion post or turning it into a personal garage, sail loft, rescue mission, college dormitory, or ambulance business, according to the stacks of letters, faxes, e-mails, and Web forms collected by the city's Department of Neighborhood Services

  In all, department officials have logged more than 900 informal inquiries since the mid-1990s, according to Barbara Salfity, the department's deputy director of real estate."That's very high. Most of our sites receive about 50 expressions of interest" apiece, Salfity said. "Even when we sold police headquarters, there wasn't as much interest. There are a lot of romantic ideas about a firehouse."

  Next month, the dreamers will get a chance to be doers when city officials issue a formal request for proposals. If all goes well, Salfity said, a new owner could begin to resuscitate Engine Company 40 by the fall.

  Old firehouses enjoy many different afterlives in Boston. Perhaps the most celebrated is on Beacon Hill. The Hill House community center now occupies a former firehouse on Mount Vernon Street. It is the same firehouse used by the Boston cast of the television show "Real World" in the late 1990s. They might have gotten the idea from the fictional Boston gumshoe of the "Spenser" detective novels. The late Robert Urich, "Spenser: For Hire" star, used that firehouse as his fictional home in the TV series based on the Robert B. Parker novels.

  "I used to think Frankenstein lived in it," said East Boston native Carla Carr of the former Eastie station on the corner of Sumner and Orleans streets, near Maverick Square. "We'd tell stories about it. Now, it seems pretty cool. The poles are still there. You could slide down them." Carr, who lives a few blocks away, wants to buy the building to garage her family's two pickup trucks.

  Actually, potential buyers should be prepared to bring their own poles. Workers removed the ones firefighters had used and covered over two round openings connecting the top-floor living space with the street-level garage when they mothballed the building, said William M. Evers, a city property manager, who took a reporter and a photographer on a tour last week.

  Inside the cavernous rectangle of a building, the paint has largely peeled from the walls. The plaster has fallen from the ceiling of what was once perhaps a living room overlooking the downtown skyline. Wooden lockers numbered from one to 15 stood askew down the hall connecting the living space from a dormitory-style room on the top floor.

  City workers patched a hole in the roof a few years ago, Evers said, but the building will need so-called tender loving care, a fact that does not discourage potential buyers like John Del Greco.

  "It would be nice to get in on the ground floor of a little renaissance in East Boston," said Del Greco, who has thought about moving his custom furniture business from the garage in his Melrose home into the firehouse.

  Members of East Boston's Seventh Day Adventist Church, meanwhile, would like the city to help them buy a permanent home for their congregation, which today rents space a few hours a week at a Saratoga Street storefront.

  ZUMIX, an East Boston after-school music program, is also looking for a permanent home.

"We are thinking about formulating a response" to the long-awaited request for proposals, said Madeleine Steczynski, ZUMIX executive director. "Our organization is growing, and we have long waiting lists."

  The ailing Sumner Street landmark was built in 1924, but firefighters have had a house at the spot since at least 1866, according to Scott Salman, Boston Fire Department spokesman. He said the building was closed because of budget cuts on April 10, 1981, though it may have gone out of service in the late 1970s, after Engine Company 9 moved into a new building across the street at 239 Sumner St.

  That jibes with Carr's recollections. For as long as she can remember, the 30-year-old dental assistant said, the firehouse was the neighborhood haunted house.

  "Even when I was little it wasn't in use," she said. "It used to creep me out. I remember it being scary. Bats used to live in there. They would come out around sunset." Carr added that her interest in the place had cooled after she learned that hundreds of others are also vying to buy the firehouse.

  The long odds also discouraged Somerville artist John Tagiuri, who owns an artist studio building in Somerville.

  "When I found out they had been taking names for 10 years, it just sounded hopeless to me," Tagiuri said. "It just seemed like a hopeless quagmire of slowness."

  Tagiuri isn't the only observer wondering why it has taken the city nearly a quarter-century to prepare the building for sale. Yet Samuel Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, gave Boston officials good marks for reducing the surplus buildings from about 200 in the early 1990s to about 30 today.

  "It's been over a decade or so, but still shows steady progress," said Tyler, though he noted the city's rising real estate values in recent years bolstered the trend, slowing the pace of foreclosures of homes and commercial buildings and adding public pressure to eradicate blighted buildings.

  Salfity said lack of neighborhood consensus about how best to reuse the firehouse prompted city officials to hold off on sale plans in the past. With the Maverick waterfront now undergoing an upscale makeover, however, she said neighborhood residents at a community meeting earlier this winter expressed eagerness to transform the building from neighborhood blight to boon.

  While there is renewed urgency about restoring the building, city officials are keeping an open mind about possible new uses. Salfity said she expects a broadly worded call, inviting commercial, residential, mixed use, and community center proposals next month.

  After reviewing them, city officials will return to the community for another public meeting later this spring for feedback. If all goes well, she said the city could designate a developer by fall, said Salfity, who said city officials will help the new owner navigate the city's permitting and zoning requirements.

  As for how much the building could go for, it's hard to say.

East Boston real estate agent Tony Giacalone said old firehouses tend to be more moderately priced than other neighborhood real estate because the buildings are difficult to finance, and rezoning them for homes, businesses, or community endeavors can be arduous.

  Another old firehouse on Marion Street in East Boston sold two years ago to David Dubois for $460,000. Dubois, a Boston restaurateur, said he briefly entertained the idea of buying the Maverick Street station, before the other firehouse went on the market.

  "A firehouse is everybody's urban fantasy. It's that idea that you can just slide down the pole and pull your car right into your living space," said Dubois, who is currently renovating his firehouse into a new home for himself plus another apartment. "There aren't many of them. That's what's cool about them. Besides, they are built like a rock."