Speakers urge council to save Old Firehouse teen center, criticize process
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Summary
Multiple residents and youth urged the Redmond City Council to preserve and renovate the Old Firehouse teen center, calling the decision process insufficiently transparent and raising allegations that the city planned to sell the lot. Commenters described emotional harm to teens and demanded deeper public engagement.
Several Redmond residents and young people used the public-comment period Dec. 2 to urge the council to preserve and rebuild the Old Firehouse teen center and to criticize the city’s process for deciding the facility’s future.
Multiple commenters described the closure as sudden and traumatic for teens who relied on the space. One speaker said teens had only two weeks’ notice that services were moving and warned that moving programs into a temporary campus would destabilize vulnerable participants. "You should have given the teens time to grieve ... these kids had only 2 weeks notice," one commenter said, adding an emotional plea to the council to "prove me wrong." (Commenter identified in the transcript as Faith.)
Attorney and parent Sasha Glenn alleged that the city had planned to sell the lot where the Old Firehouse sits for $5,000,000 and said public records and actions suggested closure was a predetermined outcome; Glenn urged the council and mayor to conduct a transparent, fact-based review before any permanent action. The transcript records this as an allegation by a public commenter; no staff or council response disputing or confirming the claim appears in the meeting record.
Other commenters raised adjacent concerns: procedural inconsistencies in staff communications about stakeholder meeting dates; calls for the council to better center teen voices in planning; and repeated appeals for the council to evaluate renovation costs and options rather than proceed quietly. Aaron Hamilton also linked the process to wider concerns about treatment of transgender residents, describing repeated incidents of misgendering and hostile encounters and urging stronger city accountability.
Council discussion later in the meeting addressed the teen-center process in ombuds items. Council Vice President Forsyth noted follow-up conversations and said the council had communicated that the teen center would be rebuilt on the land in question; she said staff would follow up with interested organizations. The transcript therefore records both sustained public concern about process and an operational council direction that the teen-center rebuild is planned for that site.