Jill Saunders bought an old Pottsville firehouse to save it. Now it’s the home of her real estate business.
Saunders Real Estate has moved into the former Phoenix Fire Co. building on the city’s east side after Saunders spent just over a year fixing it up. She moved the business there from a small office in Schuylkill Haven.
Before she bought it, Saunders says, the firefighters had even gotten a quote to tear the building down.
“I just wanted to save it,” she says. “Save the building that saved the community, how many times since the 1800s.”
And she says she didn’t hold back on fixing it up.
“I just wanted to make it the coolest office in the country,” Saunders says.
That wasn’t the plan when she first walked in, though.
The Phoenix firefighters were getting ready to merge with Humane Fire Co. and wanted to sell their building. They called Saunders to tell her the members had voted to hire her to list it.
So she showed up with her book of comps, ready to go. Then she walked through the building.
“I’m walking through the building with the firefighters, and I’m just like, oh my gosh, this would make the coolest real estate office,” she says.
At the time, Saunders was working out of an office in Schuylkill Haven that was about 500 square feet with no parking. Her company was growing, and she was already keeping an eye out for a bigger place.
It was the ceilings that got her. They’re gold and about 18 feet high. The fire company’s ladder truck was still parked inside when she toured it, with its nose up front and its tail end about where her office sits now.
She also figured that if she listed it, the building wouldn’t be the same for long.
“I knew if I listed this thing, it would be gone in probably a week,” she says. “It would either be demolished or used for something, but basically the integrity, everything would be gone from the building.”
Saunders says she loves old buildings, classic cars, and history. So she called her dad that afternoon and pitched him the idea.
“He’s like, ‘Don’t do it.’ You know, my dad’s very conservative,” she says. “And I’m just like, ‘All right, I’m gonna do it anyway.'”
That night, she wrote up an offer. She called the firefighters, told them she already had a buyer, and asked them to meet her at her Schuylkill Haven office that evening.
Three of them showed up. That’s when she told them she was the buyer. She gave them exactly what they were asking for and agreed to take the building as is.
The fire company’s members still had to vote on it. Saunders waited in the parking lot while they did.
“I was so nervous,” she says. “They wouldn’t let me upstairs until they were done, and I’m just down there sweating. What am I gonna do if they say no?”
They didn’t. Saunders settled on the building May 30, 2025.
Fixing it up wasn’t easy. The old plaster walls were crumbling from moisture, and her contractor told her a patch job would only last about a year. So everything got waterproofed and covered in drywall.
The floors are about 2 feet of solid concrete, poured to hold a fire truck. Workers drilling through it kept breaking bits. There’s a granite floor on top of it now.
Saunders wanted a sparkly epoxy floor like the one in her old office. Then the quotes came back at about $80,000. That idea didn’t last long.
It took around 35 five-gallon buckets of paint to cover the walls. All the gold trim was done with metallic spray paint.
Almost all the work was done by one man, Ted Quintinsky, of West West Terrace. He handled the floors, the electric, the plumbing, the ceilings, and a new archway. Saunders says that’s why the job took a little over a year.
“I’m not good at designing things,” she says. “I just gave him ideas, and then I’d come in, and he’d be like, ‘What do you think of this?'”
Saunders says she paid for the project without taking out any loans, which meant she had to sell a lot of homes. She’s a born-again Christian and says plenty of prayer went into it, too.
That included the 8 months she waited on the city for her use and occupancy permit. The building was nearly done, and she still didn’t have it.
“I got very specific. I was like, Lord, I need it this week,” she says.
The next day, the permit was in her mailbox. It came the same week she was making her final payment to her contractor. Saunders says she turned on a speaker and danced through the building.
The first floor is about 2,000 square feet and mostly wide open. There’s a big fish tank with some big fish in it and Saunders’ office in the back.
Her office windows have stained glass panels with a phoenix on them. An art instructor in Maryland she found on Facebook made each one by hand. Saunders says she wanted to keep a piece of the Phoenix in the building.
Hanging in her office is a big chandelier.
“It makes me so happy when people come in and they’re like, ‘That looks like you took it out of Boscov’s,'” she says.
Upstairs is another 2,000 square feet, where her agents have their own private offices. That floor is still a work in progress. A lounge is planned, and the old meeting room where Saunders sat before the fire company’s members is going to be an office for the Tracey Kreiser team.
The building still has some surprises, too. When a roofer came out to fix a small leak, Saunders climbed his 22-foot ladder and pulled herself up through a hatch above the drop ceiling.
Up there, she found another 26 feet of space, old porcelain light fixtures hanging on metal cords, and a skylight that was covered over when the building got a new roof.
“There’s a freaking skylight in the roof up there,” she says.
The firefighters also left behind a metal ball Saunders figures weighs about 500 pounds. Nobody’s sure what it is. It might be an old cannonball.
“It makes me so happy when people come in and they’re like, ‘That looks like you took it out of Boscov’s”
Saunders kept the first floor open so she’d have room for community events, like the Second Annual Saunders Real Estate Halloween Bash this Friday from 5-8 p.m.
Moving a business to Pottsville’s east side might seem like a gamble. Saunders doesn’t see it that way.
She’s been selling homes in Schuylkill County for about 12 years and says she’s watched Pottsville make a comeback in that time. Property values have almost tripled, she says, and seeing investors put money into the city’s buildings gave her the push to come here, too.
Saunders is 35 and grew up in Kempton, on the other side of Hawk Mountain. Her mom’s family is from Port Carbon, so she spent plenty of time in Schuylkill County growing up.
She got her start in real estate at Re/Max but left after about 3 months, saying they were taking too much of her commission. Then she spent 7 or 8 years at United Real Estate before going out on her own. This is her third year running Saunders Real Estate.
She says it still feels weird seeing her name on billboards or spotting people in the company’s T-shirts. At the gym, she says, there’s always at least 2 old guys wearing them.
Her team includes agents Tracey Kreiser, Coral Kreiser, Brooke Kaufman, and Joel Ovalle. Her dad, Jim Saunders, works for her, too.
Saunders says agents from other brokerages call her all the time asking if she’s hiring. She plans to keep the office small anyway.
“We’re just a little powerhouse,” she says. “There’s no drama in here. I don’t tolerate any drama whatsoever. We don’t waste time. We just sell.”
She also gave credit to X Abstract, the title company that handles a lot of her closings and handled the settlement on the firehouse.
After all the work it took to get here, Saunders says she’s staying put.
“We’re here,” she says. “We’re not going anywhere.”
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