The Stinson Beach Fire Protection District on Monday finalized the $550,000 purchase of an undeveloped property on Shoreline Highway, just a couple hundred feet away from the current fire station. The newly obtained property will be combined with an adjacent parcel that is being gifted to the district by an anonymous local donor. The two properties together form a 13,200-square-foot lot for the potential future site of a new fire station, temporary and permanent firefighter housing and expanded medical services, depending on feedback from the community. “There will be a lot of suggestions, a lot of ideas, about what we can do with the lot, how grand our plans can be and financially what we can do,” board president Jim Richie said at Monday’s meeting. “We believe that we can build something that will be an improvement on this fire station over the course of some years of planning.” The current station’s rustic housing room makes it difficult to recruit duty officers who come from over the hill to oversee firefighting efforts, Mr. Richie said. He envisions a new station that can be “a place where they might enjoy coming to, instead of it being more like a chore.” Long-term housing would help staffing, since housing costs present an ongoing struggle for the volunteer department, and a larger station would ease the difficulties of firefighters getting into gear and pulling out the engines. The purchase of the land was funded by savings generated from tax revenue and donations, plus a $150,000 donation from the Stinson Beach Volunteer Fire Department. Although the district has stashed reserves in the last few years to save money for the purchase, Mr. Richie said, funds for the construction of a new station would likely have to come from bonds and long-term financing. According to real estate agent Chris Harrington, who brokered the deal, the process of purchasing the property has taken over four years. (It was publicly announced in March when the district bid on the property.) The site formerly housed a hotel that burned down in 1971, so zoning shouldn’t be an issue; construction will be of bigger concern for nearby residents, Mr. Ritchie said. “We’ll take every concern and make them be our concerns too, because we don’t want to get on the wrong side of the neighbors,” he added. The first phase of an environmental assessment for the project—completed while the district was in a 90-day escrow—confirmed there are no major impediments to building on the land. The fire department is now working on insuring the property and clearing defensible space.