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Karlin Daniel, owner of Karlin Daniel and Associates, calls the late morning auction of the former Sebastian Fire Station No. 9 on U.S. 1 in Sebastian on Monday. Vero Beach developer Richard Peacock placed the highest bid at $160,000 in a public auction for the 5,432-square-foot building and the 0.38-acre lot on which it has stood since 1990. About a couple dozen people attended the sale with only 10 bidders.
SEBASTIAN — Indian River County fire engines raced out to save lives and property for 19 years from a spot where Vero Beach real estate developer Richard Peacock now will be reviving high-performance cars from the 1970s.
Peacock placed the highest bid Monday, at $160,000, in a public auction for the 5,432-square-foot former Fire Station 9 and the 0.38-acre lot it was on since 1990 at 1640 U.S. 1.
“It went a lot higher than I thought it would,” Peacock said after the bidding. “I thought it would probably go for half that.” The property had a market value of $364,180 in 2009, according to the county Property Appraiser’s Office. But that dropped to $186,830 last year amid the recession.
Still, County Commissioner
Wesley Davis said, Monday’s auction effectively set a new market value of $176,000 — Peacock’s bid plus the 10 percent fee he must pay for auctioneer Karlin Daniel’s service.
“I’d say it was a good day for the buyer and a good day for the seller,” said Davis, himself a real estate auctioneer.
County Purchasing Manager Jerry Davis, no relation to Wesley, set the county’s minimum bid at $35,000, But active bidding between Peacock and a few others raced past that amount and the $80,000 halfway mark with no sign of stopping.
Gary Teague, a visitor from North Carolina, was one of the bidders whose rival plans increased the price.
“Well, I didn’t mean to, but I did,” he said. “I just wanted to use this as investment for my kids to do something.”
Daniel said 10 people registered to bid on the property. Twice that many showed up to watch, including Davis and fellow Commissioner Peter O’Bryan.
Daniel said the sale would close after the County Commission confirms it, as is scheduled for Tuesday. Daniel said Peacock next needs to pay all the closing costs.
The commission last month declared the old Station 9 site as surplus, as it does with spent vehicles and equipment, for sale in a public auction.
But the county didn’t list it as surplus before replacing it. Records show the county paid $952,000 for new property at 13550 Roseland Road, and spent about $2 million on site work and construction of the new Fire Station 9. It’s an 8,000-square-foot concrete structure on 7 acres west of the Sebastian Riverwalk Shopping Center and north of the county’s Roseland water tower.
The old Station 9 was built in 1990 by Sebastian volunteer firefighters, who responded there from their homes, but didn’t sleep in the station.
They had brush trucks — short vehicles used in wildfires — rather than longer, modern engines used to fight building fires, county Emergency Services Director John King has said.
In fact, the station was so small, he said, fire crews had to remove the bumpers from the front of the fire engine for the garage door to be closed.
In time, the station became a victim of changing fire-control technology and hurricanes Frances and Jeanne in 2004. Repairs and upgrades would have been more expensive than just building a new one, Wesley Davis said.
Peacock said he has been eyeing the property for about a month as a place to relocate his fleet of “muscle cars” — such as Pontiac GTOs and Chevrolet Stingrays — now parked at his house. He said he plans to restore them for customers as well as sell to fellow enthusiasts.
“It’s going to be a hit,” said his son and business partner, Shane.
While Jerry Davis has said the land would be more attractive to a buyer than the structure, making the fire station use incidental, Peacock said the structure is what attracted him and Shane.
“We like it, we really like the structure,” he said. “There’s nothing else like this (for sale).”
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Tags: Fire Station, Sebastian