TWIN FALLS — Have you ever dreamed of owning an old fire station?
If you’ve got $535,000 lying around, you’re in luck. The city will soon have a public auction for the 46-year-old Twin Falls Fire Department station No. 3.
Unfortunately, the single-story, 3,000-square-foot building does not have a fire pole to slide down.
“Fire poles have been deemed dangerous in the fire service,” Fire Chief Mitchell Brooks told the Times-News.
Government surplus auctions are a great place to score a $10 computer monitor, a $50 bookshelf or a $5,000 pickup truck. But auctioning off a half-million-dollar fire station is not very common, Deputy City Manager Mitch Humble said.
Old firehouse going on auction
The former fire station on Washington Street South stands empty Monday, April 14, 2025, in Twin Falls. The single-story, 3,000-square-foot building soon will be auctioned off — without a fire pole.
The city is not in the land development game, he said, and typically has a specific purpose when acquiring land.
“Sometimes the purposes end,” Humble said. “In this case, we moved the fire station to another property.”
The Twin Falls City Council on Monday declared the old fire station at 929 Washington St. S. as surplus property after opening up a new station down the street a year ago.
Some of the fire department’s vehicles couldn’t fit in the old station, Brooks said, and it had limited space for sleep rooms and bathrooms for the fire crew.
“We essentially outgrew the building,” Brooks said.
Mitchell Brooks in as Twin Falls Fire Chief
Firefighter Mitchell Brooks takes over as the new fire chief as he introduces his colleagues and family members to Mayor Ruth Pierce on Monday, March 31, 2025, in Twin Falls.
With the building being vacant for a year now, the city has already heard from interested buyers. Humble has shown the building to about 10 people.
One of those potential buyers, he said, could use the building as a construction office, another might use it for a car detailing business and others are real estate speculators. The property is zoned commercial.
But there is one issue lingering over the upcoming auction. A city-owned cell tower sits in the middle of the property.
If a buyer wants to repurpose the building, the cell tower probably won’t be an issue, but it might be a problem if a buyer wants to demolish and rebuild on the one-acre plot.
“I feel like we’ll still sell it,” Humble said. “The question is, do we sell the property and retain the antenna, or not? I don’t know where we’re going to come down on that. We still need to do some research.”
The state lays out a clear process for how cities get rid of surplus property.