Encinitas is making the right move by proposing to put a fire station next to an Olivenhain park on Lone Jack Road, city Planning Commissioners said earlier this month.<\/p>\n
In a unanimous vote, the commissioners declared that the proposal will conform with the city\u2019s General Plan. Next, it\u2019s up to the City Council to make a ruling, and then the hunt will be on for project funding and various state agency approvals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s an important step for us,\u201d Commissioner Robert Prendergast said before the vote.<\/p>\n
Prendergast, who lives in Olivenhain, listed the many benefits he believes the fire station project will bring to the Olivenhain area, including lowering the fire department\u2019s response times and reducing residents\u2019 fire insurance issues. He also said he was pleased that the plans don\u2019t call for reducing the size of the proposed fire station site\u2019s next-door neighbor \u2014 Little Oaks Equestrian Park. The park, which is served by a dirt parking lot with space for horse trailers, contains picnic tables, a riding practice ring and access points to several trails.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know it\u2019s a small place, but it is used by the community,\u201d Prendergast said.<\/p>\n
The proposed fire station site currently contains a single-family home and a garage building. City officials have started \u201cpreliminary negotiations\u201d with the owners to purchase the land, a city staff report states. However, it\u2019s expected to be years before a fire station becomes a reality.<\/p>\n
Fire Chief Josh Gordon told the commissioners at the meeting that he wouldn\u2019t even want to speculate on a date, saying only \u201cit\u2019s going to be years down the road.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plans call for it to replace Fire Station 6, which now operates out of a leased commercial building along Rancho Santa Fe Road. The city has a five-year lease on that building and is planning to do some expansion work on it in the short term, Gordon said.<\/p>\n
The future station site is about 23,000 square feet, or roughly the same size as the city\u2019s Fire Station 4 in the Village Park area, Gordon said in response to questions by Commissioner Bridget Kimball.<\/p>\n
Planning department employees said the site will have ample roadway frontage to accommodate fire trucks\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t the only major fire station project being discussed in Encinitas. City officials have also said that they\u2019re eventually going to need a permanent replacement for Fire Station 1 in the city\u2019s downtown. In fall 2024, the city was forced to close the 1950-era, downtown station building due to seismic structural deficiencies. The firefighters ultimately relocated to what\u2019s been described as a \u201ctemporary,\u201d but new set of buildings on the Pacific View Art Center property.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Encinitas is making the right move by proposing to put a fire station next to an Olivenhain park…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,4601,23,100,3054,74,84,76,75,1696],"class_list":["post-464875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-california","tag-encinitas","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-north-county","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}