Former Santa Rosa fire station to be used as veteran service center

Santa Rosa has agreed to lease a former fire station to a veterans services group for $1 per year to give the nonprofit organization needed office space.

The City Council signed off on the deal with Sonoma County Vet Connect on Tuesday night, much to the delight of its president.

“It’s beautiful,” Richard Jones of Vet Connect said of the new space. “It works perfectly.”

Vet Connect is a veterans assistance program that helps former service members with a range of issues, including housing, VA medical benefits, job placement and mental health services.

The group lost its lease for office space on Montgomery Drive earlier this year and began talking to the city about relocating to an underutilized city building, Jones said.

After discussing sites that included two vacant buildings in Roseland on the site of a future park, the two sides agreed on the former Station 5 at 3480 Parker Hill Road.

The station has been vacant since firefighters moved into the new $4 million station off Fountaingrove Parkway in August. The new station was built to improve response times to fire and medical calls in the hilly area occupied by newer developments.

The group will use about 370 square feet of office space within the 4,600-square-foot building and will provide services to vets there a few times a week by appointment only. The group needed private, secure space to allow its volunteers to discuss medical issues confidentially and to safely store its files, Jones said. The station is far from downtown but is near a city bus stop.

Most of the building will continue to be used by the fire department for storage. Nothing in the agreement prevents the city from using the other parts of the building for different purposes in the future.

After some minor remodeling, including making the building and parking lot more accessible to people with disabilities, the office should open by Jan. 1, Jones said.

It’s the second time that a former fire station is being put to use to help local veterans. A former station on North Street that has been used for years as a food pantry has been sold to a group that is planning to building vets housing on the site.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.