Is there mold in Long Beach’s old Fire Station 9?

Over 19 potential buyers have placed bids for the former firehouse; Los Cerritos Neighborhood Association wants to turn it into a community center

Four years ago, Long Beach firefighters said they were feeling sick while working inside Fire Station 9; the fire station subsequently closed due to what the City said was unsafe building conditions caused by mold, and now the City is preparing to sell it.

Now some residents are posing the questions: Is there mold in the fire station? And does the City have to let go of it?

The Fire Station 9 building is now up for sale, and public tours were held in July and August for potential buyers to view the property. The Signal Tribune attended one of the tours, and did not observe mold in the building.

Realtor Jeff Coburn of Lee & Associates told the Signal Tribune that the City had remediated the mold, but that no follow-up testing had been done on the property in a while. Coburn said that he didn’t know if there was currently mold in the building, and that whoever bought the building would have to investigate for themselves.

The Signal Tribune called and emailed LBFD Public Information Officer Brian Fisk asking for a list of symptoms firefighters experienced when working inside Fire Station 9, but did not receive the requested information in time for print.

The Signal Tribune reached out twice over email to Development Services Community Information Officer Richard de la Torre to ask if the City had any municipal codes that would determine whether a residence would be unlivable due to mold, but did not hear back as of print time.

In a Feb. 2022 letter from hygiene and environmental consultant Health Science Associates to the City’s Risk Management Bureau, the consultant states that during a “limited visual inspection” of the fire station building they did not find any mold or fungal growth.

“The remediation of mold was done, at the understanding of where it exists, and was tested prior to the sales activity commencing,” City Planner Maryanne Cronin said in a presentation to the Long Beach Cultural Heritage Commission on Tuesday.

With the information available to the public and gathered by the Signal Tribune, it appears to be up for debate whether the building has a mold problem. 

In light of this, the Los Cerritos Neighborhood Association wants the City of Long Beach to reconsider selling the building, as they would like to see it converted into a community center.

“This building could be magnificent,” Los Cerritos Neighborhood Association member Jeanne Williams said. “It could be repurposed, and it can be a jewel of our neighborhood. So you’ll have nonprofits here, having office space, having a meeting room, and the back portion of the building where you’ve got those phenomenal roll-up windows, that can be a community meeting space, which we do not have in this neighborhood.”

The Los Cerritos Neighborhood Association raised over $1,000 and applied in August for the firehouse to be a Locally Designated Historic Landmark building.

The former Fire Station 9 building was created by William Horace Austin, a prominent architect who has few surviving buildings left standing in Long Beach. The station was built by workers from the Works Progress Administration, an initiative launched by Franklin D. Roosevelt to combat unemployment during the Great Depression. 

The building functioned as a fire station from 1939 to 2019.

“I’m just amazed that we’re here, given all the roadblocks that we’ve encountered along the way on this four year journey. Long Beach is sort of known for tearing down culturally relevant, eminently salvageable and beautiful buildings. And I’m simply here to ask you not to put this building on that list,” said LaVonne Miller, of the Los Cerritos Neighborhood Association, during the public comment portion of Tuesday’s commission meeting.

On Tuesday, Sept. 27 the Long Beach Cultural Heritage Commission voted to recommend that the City Council recognize the former firehouse as a historic landmark building. 

Historic landmark buildings can have their exteriors, interiors or both protected after being designated.

According to City staff, granting historic landmark status to the interior of the building may limit the number of potential buyers for the building, as the new owners would be unable to alter the protected interior features, and would have to get approval from the City before making changes inside the building.

Commission members reached a consensus on recommending that the exterior of the building be given Historic Landmark status, but they requested that City staff come back with more information about the building’s interior features. 

In January, the City Council approved plans to build a new Fire Station 9 at 4101 Long Beach Blvd., less than half a mile from the former location. According to the Long Beach Post, the City has estimated that building a new Fire Station 9 could cost between $13 million and $20 million.

Bruce Patterson, a Los Cerritos neighborhood resident for 38 years, is one of the 19 potential buyers who placed a bid for the building. He said he wants to bring a business into the space, and if he’s able to buy it, would not tear down the building, but expressed concern that the potential historical status would hamper the new business.

“Our intention is to save, restore, repurpose the building, so I have no intention of tearing it down. I want to keep the size, the shape, the integrity of the building,” Patterson said. “I understand the direction of going with the historical designation, but I also understand that during the restoration, we would run into potential issues that can conflict with the building code and things like that.”