COBBLE HILL — Community leaders are urging Mayor Bill de Blasio to bring back a Degraw Street firehouse that once served the neighborhood but was shuttered more than a decade ago.
Engine Company 204, located at 299 Degraw St., near Court Street, closed in 2003, one of six firehouses that were axed due to budget cuts under Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
At the time, more than 100 local residents and elected officials fought to save the FDNY station, including then-Councilman Bill de Blasio, who was arrested alongside former Assemblywoman Joan Millman and actor and former FDNY firefighter Steve Buscemi for protesting the closure.
In an Oct. 27 letter this week, CB6 District Manager Craig Hammerman appealed to de Blasio, asking him to recall his efforts to save Engine 204.
"As our local Council Member at the time, you said that, 'The population is booming in this area. The sale of Engine 204 makes no sense. It is an important resource and essential to the safety of our growing community,'" Hammerman said in the letter, quoting a 2006 press release from de Blasio.
Following the firehouse's closure in 2003, the city moved to dispose of the property four years later through a Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), which the community board strongly opposed.
While the City Planning Commission approved the resolution, local advocates, including de Blasio, were "able to get the city to agree not to sell off the property outright but instead to retain ownership and enter into a long-term lease," the letter said.
Ultimately, the Brooklyn Philharmonic was selected to turn the former firehouse into the new home for its administrative staff. But due to financial struggles, the classical music institution eventually gave up that plan, Hammerman said.
"At this point in time it would appear that the city is free from contractual obligations to the Brooklyn Philharmonic as the approved tenant for the property given their insolvency," the letter states.
The community board is asking de Blasio to consider the influx of residents into Cobble Hill and Downtown Brooklyn as a result of new residential developments — a fact that de Blasio himself had brought up in 2006 while fighting for the firehouse. The area's population would also increase if proposed residential towers are built at the site of the former Long Island College Hospital.
"The path seems compelling, clear and convincing that our community needs this firehouse re-opened. And we need it done now, before tens of thousands of new residents show up," the letter reads.
A spokeswoman for de Blasio on Wednesday declined to comment and referred a request for comment to the FDNY.
"While there is currently no plan to re-commission E-204, the department assesses our operational needs regularly and will continue to do so in all communities throughout the city – including Community Board 6," FDNY spokesman Frank Dwyer said Wednesday evening.
