Nearly a year after it was closed by the city as a health and safety hazard, one of the main fire stations serving north Baltimore is reopening.
Firehouse No. 31 -- first responder to Guilford, Tuscany-Canterbury and Oakenshawe, as well as Charles Village, Abell, Waverly, and the Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins University -- was expected to be open by the end of the week, after major repairs and renovations, said John Parker, captain of the station.
A grand reopening and cookout for the public is scheduled for May 29, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the station, 3123 Greenmount Ave., according to 14th District Baltimore City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke.
Eight paramedics and 27 firefighters assigned to the station were displaced last June as the city declared the 107-year-old building unsafe. They were reassigned to station No. 33 at 25th and Kirk streets in the Waverly area, as new windows were installed, a new kitchen was built, and asbestos, lead paint and a large pile of pigeon dung on the roof were removed.
The personnel were planning to move back in as early as May 18 pending approval by city Fire Chief James Clack.
"Everybody's ecstatic to get back to our firehouse," Parker said. He said relocation to the station at 25th and Kirk, made that station overcrowded -- plus, it was a half mile farther away from the communities it was supposed to protect.
"It's been almost a year since they left," noted Clarke, who announced the reopening at a meeting of the Oakenshawe Improvement Association on May 16. "We didn't want it to go into June."
Clarke said the project almost didn't happen because the city learned in October that its application for $2 million in federal economic stimulus money, to build or repair the nation's firehouses, had been rejected.
The city made do with $500,000 in bond money that had been set aside as matching funds for a stimulus grant, plus $20,000 that area communities raised for amenities.
The station is being outfitted with new office furniture, a 42-inch television, two new refrigerators and a commercial-grade stove, in order to make long shifts more comfortable for firefighters, according to Clarke and Parker.
Major upgrades for the station also include building a separate bathroom, locker area and sleeping quarters for women who work at the fire station or are assigned there on a rotating basis, Parker said. Currently, two female paramedics are based there, Parker said.
A new roof is slated for this summer, Parker said.
Several community groups have organized fundraisers for the fire station -- including the Abell Improvement Association, which used its New Year's Eve Progressive Dinners party as a benefit foer the station, according to associaton president Paul Burk.
Union Memorial Hospital donated $5,000 worth of exercise equipment, Parker said.
An earlier city program called "Be a Genie in July," and started by Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, aimed to elicit donations for fire stations citywide. But the Waverly station received only a few items from that initiative, including pots and pans for the kitchen, Parker said.
