REDMOND, Wash. — The Redmond community said goodbye to a beloved institution Saturday: the Old Fire House, which hosted a slew of city services over the years and served as a teen center for the last three decades.
It is set to be demolished and rebuilt.
A farewell concert was held outside the building, but some attended to protest the plan, carrying signs urging leaders to “Save the OFH.”
“Today should be a candlelight vigil,” Rosemarie Ives, the former mayor of Redmond and founder of the OFH teen center, said. “It’s hardly a celebration.”
Ives told KIRO 7 the building hosted Redmond’s city hall, fire department and police department at various points since its construction. In the ‘90s, she had it turned into a teen center after fielding complaints about young people loitering around town.
“Voila!” she said. “Kids loved the funkiness of it. They loved that they could be comfortable there, they could be themselves.”
That coincided with the explosion of grunge, and the OFH became a music- and arts-focused space that hosted a slew of concerts, including such iconic local cats as Death Cab for Cutie, Fleet Foxes and Modest Mouse.
“I would spend a lot of my time doing open mics, practicing on the stage or in the studio,” Chester Anderson, who spent time there as a teen starting in 2022, said.
According to the City of Redmond, the building is in poor condition and it will be more time and cost effective to demolish and rebuild it than to repair it. For the last year, a dedicated group has pushed to preserve it, but the city council voted in November to move forward.
“It’s really disappointing,” Sasha Glenn, a parent who started a petition to save the building, said. “After a year-long process of the community fighting to be heard by the city and just asking for transparency and facts in this process, we have been completely denied and shut down from those requests.”
The Old Fire House has been closed for about a year. Redmond’s teen services are now run out of a separate building in Marymoor Village.