Construction on new fire station in LR underway

It fills gap in city’s southwest

Construction on a long-anticipated fire station in southwest Little Rock is now underway.

Little Rock Fire Station No. 24 will take up a grassy lot at 8801 Stagecoach Road, north of Baseline Road and in an area said to have seen significant growth over the years.

At a groundbreaking ceremony Monday, the new station was described as a longheld dream for area residents and leaders, including Ward 7 City Director B.J. Wyrick.

“It’s been one of my top priorities for this area,” she said.

Funding for the station’s $3.2 million building comes from a three-eighths percent sales tax approved by voters in 2011, which also covered the cost of a new engine for the station, about $600,000. The land was purchased in 2013, Wyrick said.

Little Rock Fire Chief Delphone Hubbard said the building will have all-new equipment and is expected to be complete in November or December 2019.

Though the station’s official name is Little Rock Fire Station No. 24, it will be the city’s 22nd fire station. Little Rock Fire Station No. 5 closed and never reopened, and Engine No. 8 does not have a station of its own, according to Paula Patterson, the department’s administrative services manager.

The last fire station to open in Little Rock was Station No. 23 at 4500 Rahling Road in 2012.

The department plans to have 12 firefighters stationed at the new building, though Hubbard said it will have the capacity to house up to 15 firefighters. Four of the 12 staffers stationed there will be working at all times, split across three shifts, Patterson said.

The department has begun recruiting and training those firefighters, who will begin work in February. Little Rock currently has 421 firefighters, including seven civilians, according to Hubbard.

Wyrick said a fire station in that area has been talked about since 1992.

“We could see that the growth was going to be in this quarter,” she said.

Bill Lundy, a longtime resident of the Otter Creek neighborhood, said he hoped a new station would mean faster response times for emergency services. Currently, the area’s closest fire station is No. 18, which is located across Interstate 30 on Mabelvale West Road, which Lundy said is a “long haul” from his neighborhood.

The Little Rock Fire Department already has an ISO 1 insurance rating, meaning its engines can dispatch and arrive on scene within four minutes. Lundy, a former Little Rock firefighter himself, said he hoped to see the area’s response time drop down closer to three minutes with the new station’s opening. He added that the Otter Creek neighborhood has grown in population and roughly doubled in size since he moved there about 38 years ago.

City Manager Bruce Moore said he believed the new station would add to the area’s safety and quality of life.

“I think it’s critical for coverage,” Moore said, noting that adding a station was one of the top concerns city leaders had heard from area residents.

Donald Shellabarger, a member of the citizen committee that oversees sales tax revenue spending and who is also an Otter Creek resident, said the new station is close to a large concentration of houses and apartments, as well as in an area with lots of commercial development.

Hubbard said he was glad to see the new station, though it was approved before he started as the city’s chief in January. He said his long-term goals include adding one more firefighter per engine and completing a new station in west Little Rock. Funding for that station will also come from the three-eighths percent sales tax.