North Las Vegas is throwing open the doors of its rebuilt Fire Station 51 next Saturday, inviting residents to tour a $15.3 million facility that replaces a building firefighters worked out of for more than 50 years. The station at 2626 East Carey Avenue will host a public grand reopening celebration on October 3 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., complete with station tours, free tacos and barbecue, and live entertainment.
The original Fire Station 51 opened in 1973 and served the East Carey Avenue corridor for over five decades before its final active operational day on January 15, 2025, according to The Korte Company, the design-builder that led the reconstruction. The old structure was then torn down to make way for the new one, as KSNV reports. The city allocated $15.3 million for the demolition and full reconstruction through its municipal capital budget under Public Safety Fund 240, according to the same Korte Company project page.
The rebuild swaps a decades-old footprint for a 14,837-square-foot facility, per the Korte Company. KSNV describes the new station as roughly 15,000 square feet and reports it will house eight personnel, including a battalion chief, along with a fire engine and an advanced life support rescue unit. The station is one of nine serving North Las Vegas, per the same outlet's reporting.
Modern Bays, Old Bones
Architecturally, the new station carries a concrete masonry unit and T-groove metal exterior, charred Cypress wood accents, and a backlit stainless steel “51” emblem, per the Korte Company's project details. It has four apparatus bays fitted with seven four-fold doors designed for rapid deployment. Inside, crews will find 12 individual dorm rooms, a turnout locker room with 39 lockers, a commercial-grade kitchen, a day room, a fitness room, and dedicated spaces for EMS, laundry, storage, and data, the same account notes.
Designers didn't erase the old station's history entirely. Fire poles salvaged from the original 1973 building were preserved and built into the new facility's interior, paired with an industrial fire engine red and black color scheme that nods to the station's historical “black sheep” mascot identity, according to Korte Company materials and a related video posted by The Korte Company on Facebook.
Leadership and Timeline
North Las Vegas Fire Chief Joseph Calhoun, who is leading the reopening, was sworn in as head of the department in August 2017 after previously working as a firefighter, paramedic, and emergency manager in Portage, Indiana, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Calhoun told KSNV, “Our firefighters do everything and a lot of times… to take care of our community.” The station is expected to begin operations the week after the October 3 reopening event, per KSNV's reporting.
The rebuild fits into a broader pattern of infrastructure investment across North Las Vegas. In November 2024, the department opened Fire Station 58 at 960 E. Deer Springs Way to serve the rapidly growing Tule Springs community, which has more than 30,000 residents, according to the City of North Las Vegas. The department also grew its ranks last September, graduating 11 new firefighters from Fire Recruit Academy Class 2025-1 after 20 weeks of training, per the Daily Dispatch.
Regionally, emergency calls to North Las Vegas Fire Department and its neighboring agencies are routed through a Combined Communications Center at Las Vegas Fire & Rescue headquarters, a coordination system established in 1973 to manage automatic mutual aid across the valley, as Hoodline has previously reported.
