Arlington's Fire Station 8 has stood along Lee Highway for nearly a century, founded by African American volunteers who feared white emergency crews would not protect them or their homes. The county wants to replace the cramped, outdated facility with a modern one further north, where response times lag well behind the county standard.
The county wants to replace the cramped, outdated facility with a modern one farther north, where response times lag well behind the county standard.
But the proposal, which the Arlington County Board is scheduled to vote on Tuesday night, has generated a swell of opposition — from African American neighbors worried that this proud yet painful chapter of their history will be forgotten, and from residents of all races who say a fire station at the county’s preferred site eight blocks north won’t solve the response-time problem.
The controversy is the latest example of a persistent challenge in this densely populated county just outside the nation’s capital: The demand for infrastructure competes with a desire for green space, even as tight municipal budgets force officials to look for the most economical ways to build and preserve modern facilities.
The saga of Fire Station 8 started about a year ago, when residents learned that the county planned to close the building and move the crew. People mobilized, including three descendants of those first firefighters: Wilma Jones, Kitty Clark Stevenson and Marguarite Reed Gooden.
But opponents of moving the station are also citing the county’s own data, which shows more than twice as many 911 calls from the more densely populated area around the existing fire station than from the county’s northernmost neighborhoods, which are primarily composed of affluent, single-family homes.
The county also wants to encourage new high-rise developments along Lee Highway in the coming decades, adding to the number of residents — and, presumably, 911 calls — close to the existing station.