In a corner of the
Happy Valley Neighborhood, there is one fire station where the flames inside
are not only accepted, but required. For the safety of everyone inside, that
fire is confined to an oven, baking goods for customers to enjoy.
A hub for community
members, The Firehouse Performing Arts Center also homes The Firehouse Café.
First
renovated from the Historic 1927 Fire Station almost 10 years ago, it remains a
rentable public space for performers and classes of all types.
The manager of the
family owned businesses, Matt Christman, currently looks for a way to secure
the fire station’s future. With the primary holders of the estate getting
older, Christman aims to find an entity that would be willing to purchase the fire
station and lease it back to management. This was in order to keep ownership of
the building from falling into limbo and instead cement a future, he said.
An attempt to register
the business as a nonprofit is one of the ways Christman wants to continue
making the performing arts center as affordably public for the community as
possible, the center which has held everything from high school plays to yoga
classes.
“The clock is ticking,”
Christman said. “In creating a quality space at a reasonable price, in an
effort to keep from having to rent it for too much, we installed business such
as The Firehouse Café [to] generate revenue that helps offset the costs of
renting it to the artists.”
The Firehouse was the
first major community center to start up in Happy Valley in years, and
community members such as Harold Niven, who lives across the street from the fire
station, remember what happened when the building was renovated and the café
came to town. Things shifted, and The Firehouse brought a new vitality to the
area, Niven said.
“It’s a great gathering
spot for all kinds of people,” he said. “There are little kids who are 4 and 5
[years old]; they’ve been coming since they were babies. Matriarchs and
patriarchs, it’s a second home. It’s very, very special.”
The performance space
is located adjacent to the café, available for customers to observe a
performance or class when taking a break from their routines. The space itself
was built up from the room that used to house the fire engines themselves.
During regular hours,
the baristas are at work in the café baking and taking the orders of customers
sitting down to enjoy their drinks, or stopping by the takeout window for a
faster fix.
The Firehouse Café beckons
back to the origin of coffee houses as a people’s center, community member
Wayne Hagan said, who has rented the performing place before.
“The history of coffee
houses is not about coffee,” Hagan said. “Before Starbucks, it was more about
communication between people, and that tends to happen here more than any
coffee house I’ve ever been to.”
The café can find
people meeting on a coffee date, watching ballet dancers rehearse their next
piece, or looking through an art book chronicling the history of the fire
station, which dates back to the 1920s. People sit one or more at a table,
occasionally venturing over to another to start up a conversation.
“I’ve seen people
actually invite others into conversations, just strangers,” Hagan said. “Maybe
it’s the hearth. How many fire stations have a real fireplace?”
The range of people at
the café goes from customers right across the street, to long distance
commuters, Hagan said.
“The key is that it does operate on a
community level,” he said. “It’s not just a place for people to land with their
laptops. The diversity here is amazing; all sorts of people come here.”
Hagan and Niven have
both lived in Bellingham since the 1980s, and have watched the fire station
grow into The Firehouse it is today. Both of them said that many people like
themselves have come to rely on the center, and Niven hopes that it will be
around long after he’s gone.
The Firehouse
Performing Arts Center is located at 1314 Harris Ave. in the Historic 1927 Fire
Station in Fairhaven, on the corners of Fairhaven, the Happy Valley
Neighborhood and the South Hill Neighborhood.
