A local real estate development company is taking over Warrenton’s oldest standing fire station, giving new use to a building that had become little more than a storage facility.

Station Four, the facility at the corner of Highway 47 and Lakeview Drive, once served as Warrenton Fire Protection District’s base of operations. But for more than a decade, the station had been used only to store spare vehicles and equipment, fire district officials previously told The Record.

Now it will serve as the base for a new kind of operation: local home development and construction planning. New owner Ben Beckmeyer Construction purchased the station in January for $140,000, according to fire district records.

Beckmeyer Construction is the firm currently developing a 35-acre, 90-home subdivision just west of Binkley Woods Park in Warrenton.

Details about Beckmeyer’s plans for the former fire station were discussed during a June 15 Warrenton Board of Aldermen meeting, where Beckmeyer received a conditional use permit to set up shop at the station. City Planning and Development Director Tim Burks told the board that the facility could be used to store materials or equipment for the construction business, and also as an office to facilitate property sales. 

Burks added that no problematic noise or other nuisances for neighboring properties are anticipated. One of the conditions for the permit on the property is that no equipment or materials may be stored outside the building, Burks said.

Engineer Bart Korman with Lewis-Bade, representing Beckmeyer, said little will actually change about the property under Beckmeyer’s ownership.

“Basically the building’s going to be like it is now. ... We are going to fence the side and the rear behind the building,” Korman elaborated.

The only concern expressed by the Warrenton aldermen was a debate over whether overnight parking of equipment in the parking lot constitutes outside storage. Ward 1 Alderman Larry Corder said he would prefer not to have vehicle equipment like loaders or backhoes parked outside when the construction office is closed.

“I’m concerned that we would wind up with equipment out there during non-working hours,” Corder commented. “I just don’t want that to be a place where people drive by and it looks like a construction lot.”

“There may be an occasional truck and trailer parked there but ... it’s not an equipment lot by any means,” Korman replied.

Corder called for the city to place a condition of no overnight equipment parking on Beckmeyer’s permit. That got pushback from Ward 3 Alderman Jeff Jaspering.

“If he wants a trailer to sit out there until the next morning, I don’t think it’s a big deal if it’s there overnight and he needs to move it in the morning,” Jaspering said.

Aldermen Corder and Bob Delaloye (Ward 3) voted in favor of banning overnight equipment parking at the site. Aldermen Jaspering, Jack Crump (Ward 1), Scott Schulze (Ward 2), and Steven Cullom (Ward 2) voted against.