At 1 p.m. on the first Wednesday of the month, Randy Quam and his work crew get an earsplitting reminder that his Eagan business is in an old fire station.
"We all kind of hear it coming and cover our ears," says Quam of the test blast that emanates from the tornado siren in back of his building. "It's pretty darn loud."
But Quam says he doesn't regret moving to the old station last year. The garagelike structure is perfect for Competition Engines, which rebuilds and tests high-performance car engines. And it doesn't hurt that the deal came with a financial advantage: Quam got $880,000 for his old building, while he paid just $450,000 for the fire station.
Old fire stations in Minneapolis and St. Paul may have found new lives as funky restaurants, theaters and condos, but the market for them in the suburbs is hardly red hot. If not torn down, they often wind up as garages or storage facilities, not the destination venues seen in the cities.
Shakopee last month sold its old fire station for less than its asking price and market value to a vintage car hobbyist, who will use it for storage. Eagan is about to test the market again with a former fire administration building it has put up for sale.
The stripped-down appearance of decades-old suburban stations is part of the problem; most bear little resemblance to the well-crafted brick stations in the urban core.
The old suburban station "is kind of like a dairy barn," said Randy Kubes, the broker who sold the Shakopee property. "Once you don't need to milk the cows anymore, it may look sturdy but doesn't have much use."
Like the one in Shakopee, the fire station that Savage demolished about two years ago was a concrete block structure. "That's what was built years ago when towns like Savage had 2,000 or 3,000 people," said city administrator Barry Stock.