Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
City explores alternative fire station construction plan
SPRINGDALE — The city needs three more fire stations and they could be made out of metal, Fire Chief Mike Irwin said.
“We’re behind,” Irwin said. “We’ve got areas that our response time is too long, and, with the growth of the city, we’ve got to get distribution of our resources a little bit further.”
City leaders hope to pay for the three stations with a 2018 bond issue.
Wyman Morgan, city administrative and financial services director, estimates residents will be asked to vote on the issue in February or March. The stations will be among many projects in the bond issue, which likely will include a new animal shelter, a municipal campus, a northwest park and road improvements, Morgan recently said.
Mayor Doug Sprouse anticipates the bond money paying for $150 million of projects. The bonds would be paid for with a continuation of a 1 cent sales tax the city levied for the first time in 2004 to pay for $105 million in road improvements, Morgan said.
The fire stations are planned to be in front of Hellstern Middle School at 7771 Har-Ber Ave., at the Kawneer Drive and Huntsville Avenue intersection and near the future Shaw Family Park in the northwest section of the city. The park will also be paid for with the bond money.
Lengthy response times — as long as 20 minutes to some areas — are especially an issue in the northwest part of the city, Capt. Dustin McDonald said. Service would be split between the northwest station and the HarBer station, McDonald said. Station No. 4 on Elm Springs Road handles the area. The response time is anywhere from 15 to 18 minutes, Irwin said.
Irwin said the department needs to achieve a four-minute travel time from the station to an emergency scene. That’s the National Fire
Protection Association standard, he said. Department responses include fire and emergency medical services.
“Strategically, putting these stations where we have them planned helps us deliver that four-minute travel time more evenly across the city,” Irwin said.
The Har-Ber station already has been designed and will look like stations No. 2 and No. 3, which have a predominately brick exterior with some metal.
All three stations could have a fundamental structural difference from the current ones. Irwin and city leaders will determine if the stations
will be built by Morton Buildings, a metal building manufacturer in Morton, Ill.
The buildings would have brick veneer and concrete siding to make them look like the traditionally built stations, Irwin said.
A Morton Building fire station costs $250 a square foot. A traditionally built fire station costs about $450 a square foot. Each of the new stations will be just under 10,000 square feet, Irwin said.
The total cost for the three fire stations built by Morton would be about $13.5 million, which includes fire trucks, furnishings and equipment, Irwin said.
Irwin and other city leaders plan to see a Morton building in the Pleasant Hills
Fire District in Pleasant Hills, Mo., south of Kansas City. The trip probably will be Oct. 23, Sprouse said.
“The building itself has been absolutely wonderful,” Pleasant Hills Fire Chief Steve Long said. “We’ve been here two years now. We got a lot of bang for our buck.”
Pleasant Hills had an estimated population of 8,444 as of July 1, 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The 16,000-square-foot building cost $1.8 million, Long said. The building is strong enough to withstand a small tornado, Long said.
“The thought of saving money on the front end is very attractive, we just need to make sure the money we save on the front end doesn’t cost on the long run,” Sprouse said. “That’s why we need to go look at how these are built.”
Springdale has six fire stations. Fire Station No. 6 was built in 1998. Stations No. 2 and No. 3 were expanded with money from a 2012 bond issue, Sprouse said.
The City Council will discuss at a committee meeting tonight how many fire stations should be in the bond issue.
The city needs at least two more fire stations, Sprouse said.
“But I think three will help position us for future growth. It will delay the need for additional stations later,” he said.
Hicham Raache can be reached by email at hraache@nwadg.com or Twitter @NWAHicham.