Long Beach’s former Fire Station 9 is on its way to being preserved — or the building’s exteriors, at least — after the City Council this week unanimously voted to grant the decades-old facility historic landmark status.
While the ordinance to grant the former firehouse, in the Los Cerritos neighborhood, requires two successive approvals by the council, the initial OK on Tuesday, Feb. 20, was the most significant. Second votes on local ordinances are typically pro forma.
“This is the next step in a long chapter for old Fire Station 9,” Councilmember Megan Kerr, whose Fifth District includes the building, said during the Tuesday meeting. “(I’m) looking forward to what’s next.”
The ordinance, which will likely get its second vote next week, would protect the building’s exterior walls and other external features. The interiors would not have landmark status. But the city, which is selling the former fire station, would require its new owners to make “reasonable efforts” to preserve and reuse interior features, according to the ordinance.
“Historic structures are best preserved when they remain in use,” said a staff report for the Jan. 24 council meeting, during which the panel directed the city attorney to draft an ordinance to give the former firehouse landmark status. “To achieve the benefits of adaptive reuse, some flexibility is required in the preservation of the structure, particularly the interior spaces.”
The soon-to-be historic building opened in 1938 and shuttered in 2019. But it was actually the second Fire Station 9 constructed in Long Beach, according to the Jan. 24 city staff report. The original had been destroyed in the aftermath of the magnitude 6.4 earthquake in 1933 — which also sundered nearly half of the city’s other fire stations.
Long Beach was able to rebuild Fire Station 9, as well as Fire Station 7, thanks to federal funding from the Works Progress Administration. The WPA was a New Deal program established during the Great Depression to revive the economy by developing libraries, fire and police stations, and other municipal buildings.
Fire Station 7 has significantly changed since the 1940s — giving Fire Station 9’s appearance additional historic value.
But in 2019, the historic Fire Station 9, 3917 Long Beach Blvd., shuttered after ongoing issues with water damage and mold led to illness among crew members. Long Beach determined that the required repairs would cost more than relocating the Fire Station 9 crew to a new home base.
The city is working to open a new Fire Station 9 at 4101 Long Beach Blvd. A construction contract will go before the City Council in the next couple of months, Long Beach spokesperson Kevin Lee said last week.
As for the former Fire Station 9, the Los Cerritos Neighborhood Association submitted an application to the city in late June nominating the property for a historic landmark designation. In November, the Cultural Heritage Commission unanimously voted to recommend the historic designation to the City Council.
Among the reasons the commission recommended preservation, according to the Jan. 24 staff report, is that Fire Station 9 is “associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of the city’s history.”
But the interiors may not be preserved if whatever business ultimately occupies it needs to make changes for health, safety or other regulator reasons.
The city is currently negotiating the sale of the property to Gemmae Bake Shop, which has operated at its original Long Beach location since 1993 and is part of the city’s legacy business program.
“We’re now at a point,” said Eighth District Councilmember Al Austin, “where I think we have a good compromise with our community that will add to our economic development needs and populate a building that has been vacant and unutilized for many years now.”