Work to Begin on 9th Fire Station

Construction will soon begin on the ninth fire station to serve the Thousand Oaks area--the first built in nearly 30 years.

The $1.4-million station, to be built at 2101 Upper Ranch Road, should help reduce response times to the upscale North Ranch neighborhood and much of the northeast side of the city. The three-member engine crew will handle service calls to North Ranch, Lang Ranch and the southeastern portion of Oak Park.

Construction of Station No. 37, a 6,000-square-foot, single-story stucco building topped with Spanish tile, is expected to be completed by year’s end.

“It’s a welcome addition to the area,” Ventura County Fire Department Fire Capt. Tom Neimann said.

Neimann said it now takes as long as eight minutes for crews to reach some parts of North Ranch. Crews leaving the new station will be able to cut that to two or three minutes, he said.

Plans to build the station have been in the works since 1984, when Prudential Development gave $450,000 to the county in development fees to help cover the extra costs for fire service that would be required with the construction of the North Ranch subdivision. That money plus countywide fees from other new developments will pay for the new station.

The last stations built in the East County region were in 1991, when Station No. 40 in Moorpark and Station No. 44 in Wood Ranch were constructed. Thousand Oaks’ most recent was Station No. 30 on Hillcrest Drive, across from The Oaks mall, in the 1970s.