Fire hall location revealed
After years of trying to get the project off the ground, the City of Charlottetown revealed the future home of its new fire station on Monday.
It will be located on Malpeque Road, directly in between the Atlantic Cat dealership and Moore Well Drilling Inc.
It will have access roads off Malpeque Road and Sherwood Road.
The city will spend $870,000 on the 4.5-acre property.
Maypoint Holdings Ltd., which owned the property had been asking just over $1 million.
“It helps because it’s more centralized and the way the Winsloe-West Royalty area is growing these days (it’s the right location),’’ said Coun. Kevin Ramsay, chairman of the advanced planning, priorities and special projects committee.
“There’s no more land in Charlottetown now, so that’s where it’s happening.
“If something happens in the West Royalty Industrial Park they can be there quicker. It just seems to be the ideal situation. For the West Royalty area, the response time will be better.’’
The city will still operate with two fire stations. The current station on Kent Street stays open, but the station in Sherwood will close once the new one’s doors open.
The process of finding a location for a new, centralized location began in 2006 and became an on-again, off-again issue.
A fire station study was conducted a number of years ago due to insurance requirements. The study concluded the need for a station closer to the northern section of the city, where the industrial park is located, as well as expanding neighbourhoods such as Winsloe and West Royalty.
The city thought it had found the location in April 2014 and was about to spend $1.45 million to buy land on Capital Drive, but those plans were nixed when the city found out the cost to prepare the site was going be a lot more than it thought.
The city issued a request for proposals on a new fire hall location and received four official submissions: Maypoint Holdings Ltd.; Pan American Properties Inc.-APM; developer Clifford McQuaid and the Charlottetown Airport Authority.
However, Ramsay said interest in the project appeared to be high as he received calls from eight different people who had property. Now comes the task of getting to the actual construction of the building.
Ramsay said he thinks construction could be underway within a year, but there is a lot to consider.
“We have a lot of concepts that we’re looking at right now, but it’s right up in the air right now because we want to get the land purchase out of the way first.’’