If the appraiser doesn’t get back to the city about the former Fire Station 4 by the end of the week, the city council may try to sell it another way.
During a wide-ranging discussion about fire and rescue facilities at a Thursday work session, options for how to use the old fire station on Airline Road. Built in 1959, it was shuttered in March 2021 when CFR opened its new station farther west. Fire Chief Duane Hughes said Thursday the building’s roof is badly damaged. The city began efforts to prepare the property for sale in late 2022.
Mayor Keith Gaskin told the council the city still intends to sell it, but he is still awaiting a commercial appraisal.
“We’ve been trying to get a commercial appraisal for probably over a year,” Gaskin said. “… We’re supposed to have it this week, but we definitely need to move on it. The roof is getting worse.”
The city wanted the appraisal because at one point it had been negotiating with Crossroads Sober Living, which is in the old Wiygul Dental Clinic office adjacent to the station, to sell or lease it.
Crossroads is a transition house and sober living facility affiliated with Columbus Christian Center.
An appraisal isn’t necessary to sell the building, City Attorney Jeff Turnage said.
“There are several ways to do it,” Turnage said. “You can advertise by sealed bid. We can get an appraisal, the purchaser can get one, and we can sell it for not less than the average of the two. Or we can sell it through a licensed real estate broker.”
Ward 5 Councilman Stephen Jones suggested taking sealed bids for the building if the appraisal isn’t ready by the end of the day Friday, and simply rejecting them if they don’t suit the council.
Turnage told The Dispatch after the meeting the council could reject the bids based on the amount offered, but he isn’t sure if the city could say no based on the identity of the buyer or proposed purpose of the building.
“Maybe we need to put in the advertisement for bids that it has to be for a use that the council thinks is appropriate for the area,” Turnage said. “I would rather see them put that specification in the advertisement than get a good price from a bidder that’s unappealing.”
Crossroads founder Dusty Snider told The Dispatch Thursday afternoon he is still at least nominally interested in the building.
“We moved on to a different project and it kind of fell by the wayside, but we could still use it,” Snider said. “… We’ve put so much into (Friendship Church), but we’d at least give it a shot.”
The former owners donated the old Friendship Church, located off of Yorkville Road West, to Crossroads last year. Snider asked the council last month to approve a permitted use request that would allow Crossroads to operate there, but it was tabled after Ward 1 Councilwoman Ethel Stewart said she wanted more time to talk to the neighbors.
Weight equipment
Hughes also asked the council for permission to seek bids to expand Fire Station 2 on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to better and more safely accommodate its workout equipment.
Three years ago the fire department used about $105,000 in grant funds to buy exercise equipment, Hughes explained.
“We split the equipment in half so stations on the east side of the (Luxapalila Creek) could go to Fire Station 4 to work out, and we took the over half at Station 2,” Hughes said. “There wasn’t a room there that could handle all that equipment.”
For the past three years the equipment has been in one of the engine bays, Hughes said.
“It’s lessened the ability to use that side of the bay for trucks,” Hughes said. “We rotate a tanker truck between Station 2 and Station 5, and when it’s at Station 2 it has to be parked outside.”
Hughes said he wanted the council’s permission to dip into the department’s fire insurance rebate money to build an expansion at Station 2 to get the exercise equipment out of the way. CFR has about $200,000 in rebate money on hand, and he estimated the cost for the new room at less than $40,000.
The council did not vote on the issue but will likely take it up at its Tuesday evening meeting.
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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