NORTHRIDGE : Privately Built Fire Station Is Dedicated

The new fire station in Porter Ranch was officially dedicated Thursday with a lavish luncheon bash worthy of a senior prom.

After scanning the balloons, the silverware and the serving tables laden with roast beef and chicken, Los Angeles Fire Chief Donald O. Manning remarked that it sure didn’t look like your everyday municipal ribbon cutting.

It wasn’t. The food, the balloons and the cutlery--like the station itself--were provided by a private company, Porter Ranch Development Co., which built the fire station as part of a deal with the city to allow 6,000 homes in the area. Porter Ranch was allowed to forgo installing sprinkler systems in the homes in exchange for building the fire station.

The station, dubbed No. 28, is the first in the city’s history to be built and equipped by a private company, said Manning.

“If it was up to us, you would have had no lunch, and certainly no tablecloths and linen,” Manning said.

David Fleming, a member of the city Fire Commission, heralded the deal as the beginning of a new era of public-private partnership in Los Angeles.

“This is a new paradigm in the relationship between city government and the private sector,” he said. “For the benefit of both, there has to be a partnership.”

For the moment, however, a clear benefit of the deal was sumptuous food, quickly set upon by more than 100 dignitaries, community activists and fire officials.

Porter Ranch officials chuckled wanly as City Councilman Hal Bernson ribbed Irving Feintech, a general partner with the firm, about negotiations for the station.

“Irving cried a little bit, but he came through,” said Bernson.

The deal was struck before a slump in the housing market prompted Porter Ranch to slow construction of its planned community, leaving the new station stranded among rolling green hills and wildflowers at the end of a dead-end street.

Despite its remoteness, more than a dozen firefighters now work at the station, reassigned since a station on Reseda Boulevard was closed due to earthquake damage.

The new building itself suffered only one long crack in the ceiling in the Jan. 17 quake--a problem, said Manning, not of structure but of spackle.