Shomik Mukherjee
Silicon Valley, San Jose, Calif.
(TNS)
May 20—OAKLAND — The 116-year-old fire station on International Boulevard is one of the city’s oldest public buildings.
It’s been in operation for so long, the kitchen is a tiny lofted area that once stored hay, back when the Oakland Fire Department had horses.
Now, Oakland’s third busiest firehouse will likely move a couple blocks away to a 70,000 square-foot lot at 1745 14th Avenue, a road that also serves as a prime artery through the city’s San Antonio neighborhood.
For 44 years, the 14th Avenue building at E. 18th Street — surrounded by ample parking space — has belonged to East Bay Blue Print and Supply, a business first founded in 1929 that now may need to move to a new home.
Oakland city leaders will begin the process of purchasing the site from its current owner, Grace Von Querner, with $5 million disbursed by the state last year for “eminent domain,” the law that lets government agencies take properties away from their owners for public use.
On Tuesday, the council unanimously approved a “resolution of necessity” to seize and purchase the 14th Avenue lot — a decision that allows the city to initiate eminent domain proceedings. The vote did not include Councilmember Noel Gallo, who was absent.
City officials have presented East Bay Blue Print with other sites to set up the print shop. But they say no other alternative destinations exist for Fire Station 4.
The council members acknowledged at Tuesday’s meeting that eminent domain is a controversial law, having historically been used to displace Black-owned businesses and homes, whose owners weren’t fairly compensated for being forced to give up their properties.
In this case, though, the council members agreed that Von Querner has been offered fair market value for her property, while city officials have identified other spots in the neighborhood where the store can relocate.
“Ultimately, the business does not need to close and there doesn’t need to be any job loss, either,” Brendan Moriarty, a city real-estate manager, said at Tuesday’s council meeting.
An agenda report for Tuesday’s meeting details how the current city building at 1235 International Boulevard “does not meet modern fire station service standards” and lacks adequate facilities.
The building’s size and vulnerability to earthquakes leaves it “unequipped to handle Oakland on its worst day,” department spokesperson Michael Hunt said in an interview.
Firefighters from Station 4 were among the first to respond to the December 2016 fire at the Ghost Ship warehouse, where 36 people perished in one of the state’s deadliest single structure blazes.
The city will need to move quickly in its eminent domain process, because the $5 million in state money — spearheaded by state Assemblymember Mia Bonta — must be returned if not used by June 30.
Von Querner moved the East Bay Blue Print business in 1981 to its current address, the former site of a Safeway. She said at a council committee meeting last week that a relocation is “not impossible, but it’s going to be very hard.”
“We’ve been here so long,” Von Querner, who was not present at Tuesday’s council meeting, said last week. “We have people come in and say, ‘Oh, my father dealt with you.’ They all know where we are.”
Newly elected Councilmember Charlene Wang, who was sworn in earlier Tuesday, said she planned to “see how I can support th