Redding looks to build modern firehouse
REDDING — The Redding fire district is looking to demolish an existing volunteer firehouse and build a new, contemporary facility.
The district’s plans — already approved by the conservation commission — are under review by zoning officials and scheduled for a public hearing on May 12, according to Aimee Pardee, the town’s land use director.
The Redding Ridge fire station, centrally located at 186 Black Rock Turnpike, was originally constructed in 1927 as a horsedrawn wagon facility and has become worn out over time despite several renovations and additions made.
The district initially began looking to make more repairs and tack on another addition but quickly realized the project would warrant more when a structural engineer told them the building’s foundation is “falling apart.”
“By the time he finished going through all the different things that had to be done just to fix it, he said at this point, you’ve surpassed the amount it would cost you to tear it down, replace it and start over from scratch,” Fire Commissioner Phyllis Magnussen said.
And a crumbling foundation is just the beginning of repairs the building needs, according to Magnussen.
The fire house’s status and needs
Beyond foundation repairs, Magnussen outlined multiple fixtures the commission has considered including replacing the air conditioning and heating systems, refiguring the engine bay’s door heights to meet regulations requirements and making more room for storage and training.
Currently, there isn’t adequate space for the volunteers to complete training. Whereas there are about 30 crew members that require training sessions, the fire station’s training room can only accommodate about 20 people at most.
The lack of space has often forced the crew to get creative and train in other parts of the building. A similar concern exists for storage, causing supplies to be stored in different sections of the building.
“Everything’s jumble tumble on top of each other,” Fire Commissioner Bennett Pardee said, noting that most supplies are located in the basement, a level that isn’t very accessible.
Plus the building’s infrastructure and lack of space have spawned “health concerns,” Magnussen said. Firefighters often return from fires with contaminated equipment full of toxins and have nowhere to clean it out. With no place to properly vent it out, they typically take the contaminated gear home and clean it there, running it through the same washer machines their children’s clothes are run through.
“It’s [the firehouse building] served its purpose and it’s outlived its usefulness,” Magnussen said. “In order to do the job right, we want to put up a building that will last way into the future.”
The district’s plan for a new, modern facility
Feeling as though there were limited options, the fire district hired an architect, Jeff Mose, to draw up plans for a new fire station.
Mose and the district’s attorney, Frank Scinto represented them in a zoning meeting on April 14 and laid out their proposal to the board members reiterating that the aging structure is “non-conforming in a variety of ways.”
“We looked very hard at trying to reuse the existing building as a renovation project, and the existing foundations, we determined would not be compatible with any current seismic loading or industry standards for standard building practices today,” Mose explained to the board.
One of the obstacles planners had to overcome was the small lot the structure sits on. The parcel was less than an acre until the district received a land donation from an abutting property and purchased one more piece of land, which allowed them to grow the property to a 1.25 acres, according to Scinto.
The current building is composed of three “undersized” apparatus spaces with the first level housing a training area and administrative lodge, the second floor serving as a multi-purpose room and the lower level being used for storage, Mose said.
Under Mose’s new design the firehouse would undergo an extreme makeover, being transformed into a fully compliant, New England farmhouse-style building with modern amenities. As it stands the current building takes up about 8,800 square feet and Mose’s model consumes 15,000 square feet.
He said areas for the firehouse’s daily functions will be “kind of segregated” from the administrative area, which he demonstrated with a 3D animation.
Mose’s blueprint detailed a “four-day apparatus room,” that meets height requirements for current and future equipment protocols, in addition to devising a day room and dispatch center.
The training and administrative spaces would be put on the second floor along with overnight suites for crew members. Its existing lower level would serve as a storage area with an expanded mechanical space and supplementary training section.
Where the district stands in the approval process
The fire district is in the early stages of the approval process for the project. Magnussen said they wanted to first figure out if their plan was even possible before moving forward.
At this moment in time, the district is seeking approval from the zoning commission and members of the public. Whether or not they can move forward with the project will ultimately be determined by Redding residents who vote either yes or no.
The district hopes to get all of the necessary permits before making the project “quotable,” Bennett Pardee said, although he made it clear that if approved, the construction would be funded by taxpayers’ dollars.
“We are the fire taxing district and it’s our expectation that this will be funded by the taxpayers if they agree to do so,” Bennett Pardee said.
Considering the district currently has zero debt, the thought would be to issue bonds or take a “private note” from the bank and finance the project with debt that would be repaid in annual installments with funds raised through taxation, Bennett Pardee added.
If the project isn’t approved, Magnussen said they’ll return to the drawing board and seek an alternative route, which is likely to lead them down an avenue of spending an “awful lot of money” to repair a building that no longer fits their needs.
“We’ll persevere one way or another,” she said.