Beacon Engine Case Dismissed

Firefighters say they will continue fight for station

A state judge on Monday (March 31) dismissed a request by the Beacon Engine Co. that she prevent its members from being “excluded” from a 136-year-old firehouse and delay the city’s sale of the building. 

Two weeks earlier, Judge Maria Rosa had rejected a request from the retired volunteer firefighters that she pause a city order for them to vacate the station by March 31.

The East Main Street firehouse, inactive since 2020, has been at the center of an ownership dispute as Beacon officials prepare to sell it and the 113-year-old Mase Hook & Ladder station on Main Street. The city hopes to raise $3.7 million. 

The retired firefighters argue that Beacon Engine Co. owns the original 2½-story structure, with the city holding an adjacent engine bay added in 1924. In fact, that was what all parties believed for decades, including when the City Council voted to close the station five years ago as part of a plan to consolidate operations.

However, Beacon officials in 2023 conducted a title search that they say revealed municipal ownership of the entire facility. A real-estate expert told the court that a deed recorded in 1889, the year the station was built, showed that the Village of Matteawan, which preceded Beacon, owned the site. 

Rosa noted in her decision that the volunteer company, which uses the decommissioned firehouse for social gatherings and to coordinate charitable campaigns, stands to suffer “irreparable injury” — a criterion required for the order it sought — if the station is sold. But at the same time, the firefighters “failed to sufficiently demonstrate” either a valid ownership claim or “any defect in the city’s claim of title” in the dozens of documents submitted to the court, she said.

Conversely, Paul Conrad, the title expert hired by the city, provided “copies of the recorded deeds, as well as a survey depicting how the city acquired” the parcels that comprise the property, Rosa said. 

Her decision would appear to give Beacon the go-ahead to sell the station. City officials have commissioned Gate House Compass Realty to list Beacon Engine in May for $1.75 million and Mase for $1.95 million.

The stations are to be sold with covenants that restrict renaming them or altering historical features. The proceeds will offset the $14.7 million the city spent to build a central fire station that opened near City Hall last fall.

Nonetheless, Joe Green, a Beacon Engine Co. trustee, said Wednesday that the firefighters are preparing another legal challenge. In a document submitted to the court on March 27, Lauren Scott, the firefighters’ attorney, said the fire company’s claim that it owns at least two-thirds of the property is based on a title search it commissioned. 

Scott, who called the testimony by the city’s title expert “glaringly deficient due to its lack of analysis” of historical deeds, argued that Beacon’s charter prevents a litigant from enforcing a claim, debt or demand against the city for at least 30 days after filing a notice of claim in court.

Because Beacon Engine filed notice on March 7 signaling its intention to seek judgment on the ownership challenge and “unjust enrichment” for building maintenance and insurance the volunteers say they funded, the company cannot submit its complaint until Monday (April 7), Scott said.