Palm Beach County Is Turning Two Donald Ross Road Homes Into a Fire Station After Jupiter Built Its Own Department
The county paid $1 million for one former single-family home west of Florida's Turnpike and is spending $2 million on two homes to convert into a station, replacing the Abacoa presence it handed to Jupiter's new department.
Palm Beach County's newest fire station site does not look like one yet. County fire rescue trucks have been parked beside a former single-family home at 6519 Donald Ross Road, west of Florida's Turnpike - a house the county paid $1 million for so it would keep a presence in the area after Jupiter created its own fire department, Stet News reported this week.
The purchase is part of a $2 million county plan to buy two homes along Donald Ross Road and convert them into a fire station. The county needed the replacement because it transferred its station in Abacoa to Jupiter, which decided in 2023 to break away from Palm Beach County Fire Rescue and run its own department.
Jupiter's side of the split has been the expensive one: the town committed to paying millions to build its own fire stations, in what Stet described as a tumultuous three-year transformation that required the town to put up nearly $60 million. Town officials promise the move will reduce costs for taxpayers over time. For the county, the two-house conversion on Donald Ross Road is the smaller, faster answer to the same map problem - keeping county crews positioned in an area its former station no longer covers.
