Escondido’s Old City Hall, Firehouse Saved--for Now

Escondido’s first fire station and the old City Hall, which have been threatened with demolition for more than a year, have won new leases on life.

The buildings were sold to the Palomar Pomerado Hospital District by the city six years ago in anticipation of the construction of a new city complex at Broadway and Valley Parkway. Since March, when the new City Hall was completed, the old buildings have sat empty, subject to vandalism in the shadow of the hospital’s high-rise expansion.

At Wednesday’s City Council meeting, city Planning Director Bob Leiter told council members that the hospital district could not demolish the old structures until an amendment was obtained to modify the original permit the city granted for the $50-million hospital expansion.

City Atty. David Chapman said the original conditional-use permit granted to the hospital specified the retention of the two former city buildings as a “visual buffer” between the hospital towers and the modest one- and two-story buildings that line Grand Avenue, Escondido’s downtown commercial district. The old city buildings are on a triangular tract at Grand Avenue and Valley Boulevard.

Modification Could Take Months

Now, Leiter said, hospital district officials must apply for an amendment to the permit, specifying removal of the two structures. The permit modification could take several months.

Although no one has come forward to champion the retention of the old City Hall, firefighters and historians have carried on a crusade to preserve the fire station, a homely, 49-year-old adobe structure that has been used in recent years as a City Hall annex and storage area.

After the city’s move to its new civic center early this year, Palomar officials attempted to obtain a demolition permit for the two buildings, citing health and safety dangers the empty structures posed. But the City Council stayed the move after angry protests from the Escondido Firefighters Assn., which sought to preserve the fire station.

A petition drive by the firefighters was successful in putting the issue to Escondido voters in June, but a measure calling for preservation of the building failed by less than 2% of gaining a majority.

City in ‘Driver’s Seat’

Robert Edwards, president and chief executive officer of the hospital district, acknowledged Wednesday that “the city is in the driver’s seat on this issue” but said the hospital plans to pursue every avenue to have the buildings demolished.

“There was a rabid bat found in the (fire station) building about 18 months ago, before we took possession of the buildings,” he said, “and there have been bat sightings recently.”

Not only that, but the dangers of fire and drug dealings in the abandoned buildings concern hospital officials, Edwards said. Plans are to raze it as soon as possible, perhaps turning it into a parking area until money for construction of a 25,000-square-foot office building is available, probably in 1992, he said.

“We are at a loss to know what we have to do,” Edwards said. He said hospital officials thought that the issue had been settled at the polls when the measure to retain the fire station failed. The hospital district again applied for a demolition permit for the buildings in July, only to be informed--one day short of the deadline for issuance of the permit--that they must also obtain a conditional-use permit amendment.

Councilmen Kris Murphy and Ernie Cowan have been appointed as a council subcommittee to try to find a compromise solution to the dispute, but Edwards said the hospital cannot use the property until all the old structures have been demolished.