College Station redeveloping fire station for future visitors center

theeagle.com

College Station’s former Fire Station No. 1 is being renovated to house a visitors center to promote tourism and economic growth. City council staff approved an almost $4 million agreement for the renovations at an April council meeting.

Renovations to the fire station at 1207 Texas Ave. started last week. The visitors center will also house the offices for the city’s tourism and economic development departments, according to Natalie Ruiz, director of economic development for College Station.

A previous visitors center on University Drive had to move when the property was being redeveloped, she said, and was relocated to Holleman Drive.

“The purest form of economic development is tourism, with people coming into your community and spending money at your local businesses, hotels and retailers,” she said. “The thought was we could use the bays as an event center as well as a visitor center, which is on a highly traveled roadway and right across from [Texas] A&M, to be more welcoming for visitors in our community for places to eat and places to stay.”

The interior renovations to the 16,000-square-foot building will include office space for 15 tourism and economic development staff members, the visitors center, and event space in the bays that housed fire trucks, according to Emily Fisher, the city’s director of public works.

“The old fire station was in good shape, unlike the old City Hall building that was in poor shape,” she said. “We saw that this building was not as old, and could be used for something else, and that is where the idea came from to renovate it where citizens could use it.”

The $3,871,798 renovation agreement is funded by the hotel occupancy tax revenue through the city, Fisher said.

“The exterior of the building will also still have the feel of a fire station,” she said. “The roll-up doors will still be there but we are replacing them, and it will have a brick façade with an awning going around it. We wanted to keep that fire station feel when you look at it.”

The hope is to hold welcome events and meetings for sports gatherings like the Games of Texas or large softball tournaments, Fisher said.

College Station City Councilman John Crompton said he is most excited about the new meeting and social space that will serve as a hospitality environment.

“This location is really important,” he said. “We are right in the center of town on the primary highway with high visibility. I think it is going to be much more successful now that we have this physical location. People in the tourism business talk about the key variable being ‘location, location, location.’ And our visitor center will be in exactly the right place where everybody will see it.”

Ruiz said she is also looking forward to having a new space for her tourism and economic teams to work together to serve the community.

“Two years ago when we incorporated tourism development under an economic development umbrella, we saw that this is the next step in really building the economic development team and the tourism team, by working together in the same building to really improve our local economy through tourism,” she said.

The construction schedule is six to eight months, and Fisher said they hope to be finished by the end of the year, though it has been difficult to receive materials on time because of supply chain issues.

Fisher said a visitors center will be beneficial to the city now that people are returning to traveling after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I know people may look online to just get information, but there are still people out there who want to stop and see something, and hopefully this will give them an opportunity to do that and take pictures,” she said. “Having an event space right near City Hall is another plus because there will be this large grass area they can open to have a nice event space here in town.”

For more information, visit grow.cstx.gov.