Oakland Offers $5 Million for New Fire Station Space

Oakland is poised to use $5 million in eminent domain funds to move the city’s oldest fire station into the Clinton neighborhood.

The East Bay city offered the sum, disbursed by the state last year, to Grace Von Querner, the owner of East Bay Blue Print & Supply, The Mercury News reported. The print shop has been at 1745 14th Avenue, on the border between Clinton and San Antonio, for 44 years.

The 116-year-old Fire Station 4, currently at 1235 International Boulevard in East Peralta, is Oakland’s third-busiest firehouse. Moving into the 70,000-square-foot lot is a matter of necessity, according to city officials.

“We have institutions [here] that have longevity,” city Council member Carroll Fife said at a committee meeting last week, “but our fire station has outworn its ability to function for individuals experiencing fires or medical emergencies.”

Officials are closing in on the property because they say the current facility “does not meet modern fire station service standards,” per the Mercury News. State Rep. Mia Bonta is leading the eminent domain effort.

The International Boulevard firehouse is “unequipped to handle Oakland on its worst day,” Michael Hunt, chief of staff for the Oakland Fire Department, told the publication.

Brendan Moriarty, Oakland’s real property asset manager, noted at the recent meeting that the city is working with East Bay Blue Print to ensure a seamless transition.

“We’ve already provided relocation services to the property owner [and] identified a number of locations in the neighborhood and within Oakland,” Moriarty said. “So there’s no reason this business needs to shut down [or] these jobs need to be lost.”

Von Querner said at the meeting that moving her business is “not impossible, but it’s going to be very hard.”

“We’ve been here so long,” she added. “We have people come in and say, ‘Oh, my father dealt with you.’ They all know where we are.”

East Bay Blue Print has been offered market-rate value for the land — the site of a Safeway before Von Querner took over the parcel in 1981.

The city is working fast to secure the 14th Avenue lot, as the $5 million in state money must be returned if not used by June 30. The city council will vote May 20 on a resolution of necessity to seize and purchase the land.

— Chris Malone Méndez