In all the years the Locust Point Civic Association has fought City Hall, its members recall losing only once.

That was in 1991, when city officials closed the community's fire station.

Now the neighborhood can erase that defeat from its record. During a ceremony yesterday in an abandoned gravel lot with a rusted barbed wire fence on East Fort Avenue - the main drag through the peninsula - city, fire and neighborhood officials broke ground on a station.

The $2.8 million building will contain 14,000 square feet of space and rise at 1001 E. Fort Ave., four blocks from the old firehouse.

It will also house a community room and open next year, Mayor Martin O'Malley said.

Residents are delighted.

"This is a super station," said Betty Macioch of the Locust Point Civic Association.

The station will serve more than Locust Point. As expected, the city will close two nearby firehouses and move their units to the new building.

One station, at 399 E. Fort Ave., was built for $12,000 in 1875, fire officials said. It's the city's oldest. The other, at 1227 S. Hanover St., dates to 1888.

The city Fire Department has been marked by closings linked to Baltimore's shrinking population, but none of the dozens of firefighters at yesterday's ceremony complained about the new consolidation.

It will be much like the consolidation after a new station was opened in March 2000 in Northeast Baltimore.

"It's always good to have something built instead of closed," said Rick Schluderberg, the president of Firefighters Local 734.

And unlike the two south-side stations that now rush to fires and other 911 calls in Locust Point, this station will be located inside Locust Point. To residents, that's important.

A station of their own

"This is Locust Point," said Macioch, 70. "We're part of South Baltimore, but we're always Locust Point."

O'Malley acknowledged their pride yesterday.

"I know this is a day that Locust Point residents have been waiting for for a long time," he said. "We will again have a firehouse in Locust Point, a 'superhouse' at that."

The community has been known as an insular place with brick and stone rowhouses and Fort McHenry at the end of the peninsula. Residents say Locust Point has only two ways in or out.

And one route is often blocked by trains.

Because of nearby industry and chemicals-carrying trains, residents said there's potential for big fires in hard-to-get-to places. They need their own station, they said.

That's why they protested in 1991 when their station, as well as three others, closed.

"In retrospect, I think they realized they made a mistake," said Victor Doda Jr., 34, a fourth-generation Locust Point resident.

This community has a reputation for fighting City Hall. People at yesterday's ceremony recalled Doda's mother, Shirley, leading the charge to keep a road and bridge from being built through Locust Point 30 years ago. They won.

Residents also draped black crepe paper over their fire station in 1984 after then-Mayor William Donald Schaefer announced plans to remove both pieces of firefighting equipment. The mayor returned one piece.

"Things have changed," Macioch said. "It used to be we'd march on City Hall; now we work through our representatives."

The neighborhood is changing in other ways, too.

The old firehouse, which children used to run to when they were injured at a nearby park, is home to the Marine Corps League. The property values of some older homes have doubled during the past five years.

Commercial rebirth

Phillips Foods has moved into the closed Coca-Cola plant. Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse has built new houses and commercial buildings.

Potential buyers have even looked at the old Chesapeake Paperboard Co., the backdrop for the new firehouse, O'Malley said.

The new firehouse will be different from the smaller, original building.

For starters, it won't have a tower with a window. Firefighters used that tower to watch for blazes when communications systems went down - and to hang out their cotton hoses to prevent mildew.

"A firehouse down here, it's good," Doda said, "but why did they close the original firehouse?"