Shore Acres fought to keep its rescue station and won, with a spacious waterfront brick building.
By JON WILSON
Published September 17, 2003
ST. PETERSBURG - After nearly a decade of waiting, Shore Acres has a fire station that's truly a fire station.
It opens officially at 9:30 a.m. today. A measure of hoopla is scheduled, and the public is invited.
Next month, another ribbon-cutting will open a rebuilt station in the Central Oak Park neighborhood at 4825 Ninth Ave. N.
On display today in Shore Acres is a new brick building at 1651 Bayou Grande Blvd. It is 3,371 square feet, solid, secure and not likely to go away.
That wasn't the case with its predecessor, a two-bedroom, one-bath house where the fire truck had to be parked under a shed.
City administrators at intervals looked at the dwelling known as Station No. 12 as a likely spot to chop when budgets tightened. In 1994, a closure movement grew serious.
But residents wouldn't hear of it.
They wrote letters and buttonholed officials, arguing that it would take too long for fire and rescue units to cover 2 or 3 miles from Station No. 4 on Fourth Street N or Station No. 7 at Fossil Park.
"We fought hard to keep it," said Leelyn Main, the Shore Acres neighborhood president.
Connie Kone, who represented the area on the St. Petersburg City Council, embraced the cause. Then Bill Foster took up the cudgel when he joined the council in 1998.
"That area has hundreds of households, and the thought of coming from No. 4 or 7, we're talking very, very delayed response times to come that distance," Foster said.
Three shifts of four members each staff the station, which cost about $970,000 to build, said division administration and emergency management chief Robert Ballou.
The shiny red engine sits in a garage now. It will answer calls primarily from Shore Acres, Snell Isle, Venetian Isles and Tanglewood.
Ballou estimated the station receives between 1,050 and 1,100 calls per year. Most are for medical emergencies, as is the case with stations citywide, Ballou said.
The figures represent a few hundred more calls than were received, say, six years ago, he said.
"It's definitely picking up out there," he said.
Shore Acres residents always have tended to treat the station's firefighters and medics as part of the neighborhood family.
Capt. Steve LeCroy noted early this week that the tradition is continuing. Carole Odell, who lives a block away, donated an American flag that had flown over the Capitol in Washington, D.C. It was to be presented to her husband, Marion D. Odell, a retired brigadier general who died two weeks before he was to have received it.
"I kept thinking, where would be a good place for it?" said Mrs. Odell. "And when they were building the station, I thought why not there. I can see it all the time."
On a wall inside is a framed photo of a B-1 bomber and a St. Petersburg Fire and Rescue patch. One of the station's firefighters arranged to have the patch aboard a B-1 on a mission over Iraq, LeCroy said.
Just the one fire engine is on duty, but talks continue about putting a boat at the station, which sits next to a canal.
"It's our only waterfront station," said Foster, who has supported the boat idea for several years.
Currently, the only boat rescue operation is out of Station 11 at 5050 31st St. S.
"If you have a rescue around Gandy, in Riviera Bay, even at the Pier, it's no longer a rescue, it's a recovery," Foster said. A boat at the Shore Acres station would mean "we could be anywhere from the Pier north within five to 10 minutes, tops," Foster said.
Ballou, the district chief, said a boat is "a consideration the chief might want to look into." But there are no budget plans for one now.
