This post was written by Hatchet staff writer Brandon Lee.
A temporary fire station built behind the Thaddeus Stevens School will open in December while its original location in the West End neighborhood undergoes large-scale renovations.
The permit to build the temporary station was granted three months ago, and will help a $150 million neighborhood renovation project make progress four years after its initial approval in 2010. The development will upgrade the West End firehouse and library and add new residential and commercial spaces to the neighborhood.
A groundbreaking at the permanent station will be held on Dec. 15. The D.C. Fire Department’s Engine 1 and Truck 2 will be housed at the school until finishing touches on the new station are completed in late 2016.
The project on the nearly 50-year-old West End fire station, which hasn’t been renovated since being built, is important for responding to nearby emergencies, said Tim Wilson, a spokesperson for D.C. Fire and Emergency Services.
“We’ve outgrown the space we have at the current location,” he said. “Moving to the school was to make sure our service there would still be available in that part of town.”
Once the trucks are moved to the temporary lot by the end of the November, real estate company EastBanc Inc. will then have the go-ahead and break ground on the sites for the brand new library and firehouse.
Patrick Kennedy, chairman of the Foggy Bottom and West End Advisory Neighborhood Commission, said the site behind the school was chosen because there were few other empty lots elsewhere in the neighborhood.
“There was some community concern that there isn’t any perfect place for the interim location,” he said. “This was one track they had empty land available, and we all wanted an updated fire station for public safety.”
Kennedy added that moving fire engines there hasn’t been without some controversy, because neighbors in the area have voiced concern about increased noise in the area.
“Obviously, everything will be good when everything is completed,” he said. “We’re just going to have to tolerate a little inconvenience in the interim and keep that as short as possible.”
Thaddeus Stevens School, a historically black elementary school, was shut down six years ago by D.C. Public Schools. One company proposed converting it into an apartment building, which faced massive backlash from neighbors who feared it would house rowdy students from GW.
Over the summer, the District approved turning the space into a school under the Ivymount program, which caters specifically to children with autism and works with GW’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development.
Molly Whalen, director of development at Ivymount, said ANC commissioners have testified in support of the school, which will be the first tenant since 2008 to occupy the faded building.
“It’s a perfect place and a central location for really effective autism education,” she said. “Our neighbors and the ANC have been very excited about seeing the building be used as a school again.”
The current five-decades-old West End Library continues to remain vacated after being closed in June, but a temporary library was established in the Watergate Complex on Virginia Avenue.
