Downieville Fire District Buys Land for New Station

DOWNIEVILLE — The Downieville Fire Protection District has bought a Main Street property with $475,000 in donated money, its first step toward replacing the scattered buildings it now uses with a single fire station. The district announced the purchase of the Dan and Ingrid Larson property at 117 Main Street on August 10. Frank Lang, chair of the fire district’s board, said donations covered the full purchase price, leaving the district with no mortgage.

The purchase breaths new life into a project that spent more than a decade going nowhere. The district had tried for 12 years to build a joint fire station with the United States Forest Service, but that effort never gained traction. The district’s board discussed a property purchase with Ingrid Larson at its meeting on January 21, and over several months has begun the process of designing a station to fit the lot.

The district now responds from five buildings, and it says none of them suits modern equipment. Station 1, attached to the Downieville Community Hall, holds a small engine and a rescue truck and cannot accommodate newer, larger apparatus. Station 2 keeps an engine, a water tender, a small wildland engine, and a reserve ambulance in the old foundry building, which was built in 1855 and stands on narrow Pearl Street with limited room to get in and out. The district says that building “has no heat, is porous to the weather and is generally in poor repair.” Station 3, beside the Sierra County Courthouse, holds the primary and secondary ambulances.

Two of the spaces are wanted back by their owners. Sierra County would like to reallocate the structure next to the courthouse, and the Forest Service would like to use the compound space the district leases for its administrative fire office. The district also rents space at the community hall for emergency medical services training and equipment storage.

The district calls a replacement station “mission critical,” describing the goal as one building that is “centralized, accessible, responsive and environmentally controlled.” Lang said the new station will house all nine pieces of fire apparatus the district operates, with a ground floor of roughly 8,000 square feet and a second story of about 4,000 square feet. Sending every responder to the same address would improve communication and give the district one point of contact for staging resources. The district also expects the building to meet current safety standards and to run on its own if needed, with an independent power source, clean water, decontamination measures for responders and their gear, fuel storage with secondary containment, a high-speed network with battery backups, and a communications center tied in with the Sierra County Sheriff’s Office and the Forest Service.

Initial cost estimates are roughly $10 million, and the district says it has $4.5 million in donations to date. Lang said the remaining money would come from additional private and organizational donations as well as United States Department of Agriculture grant and loan programs. The funds that bought the Larson property were donated over the past 10 years by private individuals and by organizations including the Downieville Improvement Group, the Downieville Lions Club, the Downieville Volunteer Firefighters Association, the Downieville Fire Auxiliary, the James & Lia Whitehead Family Charitable Trust, and Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship.

The district has hired J.T. Heater, an architect from Nevada City, who has begun preliminary site preparation and design. The district estimates the planning phase will take a year and hopes to start building by late 2027 or early 2028.

Lang said the buildings the district uses now would be handed back or repurposed once the station opens. The ambulance station would revert to the county, and the lease for the fire office on the Forest Service compound would be terminated. The foundry would remain in use for storage while the district weighs other options, including a sale, and Lang said the station attached to the community hall might become a museum housing the old fire truck and perhaps the buggy, an arrangement that would have to be negotiated with the county.

The Larson property also includes a rental cabin that currently houses the district’s relief paramedic. Donations to the New Fire Station Building Fund can be sent to the Downieville Volunteer Firefighters Association, PO Box 173, Downieville, California 95936. The Association is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and all contributions are tax deductible. Lang can be reached at PO Box 25, Downieville, California 95936, or at 530-277-8954.