Rutland Herald
During a town Select Board meeting Tuesday night, options for a new station were tossed around and tossed aside.
The town hired architects Alan Brown and Don Walter last year to assess the needs of the department and desired results for a new station.
Brown and Walter presented options to the meeting in July and more options were presented Tuesday.
Each option required the purchasing of more land to accommodate necessities that the station now lacks.
The current station, on Killington Road, is on less than one acre of land, limiting turning space for the vehicles.
The 1974 building has uneven floors, inefficient heating, no cross ventilation and not enough storage, said Fire Chief Gary Roth. The building is also too close to the road, about 6 feet, instead of the 50 to 60 feet now required for new stations or stations undergoing serious renovations.
Roth said each time the trucks leave or enter the apparatus bays, it is a struggle because of the proximity of the road and the building.
A new sprinkler system would need to be installed, as well as an elevator and accessible entrance for people with disabilities.
“It basically makes no sense to stay on the location and fix up that building,” Walter said. “Each option is roughly the same cost and with the current site, there is no room for future additions.”
Each cost for each option is still an estimated preliminary cost, said Town Manager Seth Webb.
Chet Hagenbarth, director of the town’s highway and facilities department, presented a slideshow of options put together by Dore and Whitier Architects Inc. highlighting features of each potential building.
Several options were eliminated quickly based on estimated expense combined with the overall lack of major improvements.
“It seems like a waste to invest a large chunk of money into an inefficient site,” said Selectman Chris Bianchi, referring to the existing lot on which the nearly 40-year-old building is situated.
Select Board chairwoman Patty McGrath agreed.
“The plan is to invest in a building that will last as long as this one has lasted,” McGrath said. “But dumping money into that building makes no sense.”
One option favored was the idea of the potential purchase of a lot of land between Charity’s Restaurant and Liquid Art on Killington Road to construct a new station from the ground up.
The 6-acre lot is privately owned and is being considered for purchase. However, for now the land is simply being used as a foundation example.
“A piece of land such as this would allow for more than enough space should we decide further down the road to expand,” Hagenbarth said.
Benefits of purchasing a new piece of land include space to construct regulation-sized bays for the trucks, along with adequate parking for workers and visitors, and no required replacement for Station Two on River Road, miles from the main station.
Building from the ground up at a different location would allow the fire department to continue to use the current station until the new one is built.
“If we redo that station, we need to find a temporary place to house the trucks and equipment,” Roth said. “Not only will that cost a lot of money, but it has the potential to slow down our response time.”
Future additions to the fire department could potentially be a police station and a civic center, and even perhaps, the town offices one day.
Webb would like to see the town more united, because Killington is what he calls a “driving town,” with many of the main buildings spread across the town in an inconvenient manner.
But those options are much further down the road and depend entirely on the direction the town goes regarding the new station.
Two downsides would be the purchasing of a property and the requirement of a new storage system.
Webb said to take this a step further, the town will put together a fire department building committee — consisting of three to four residents, a Select Board member and fire department members — to help determine the need that exists for the building and works to build consensus around a final direction. The Select Board will issue a call for interested parties to serve on the committee next month, Webb said.
“We want to reach out to the community to ensure we get their input on this decision. The future of the fire department facility is a big one, and the community needs to make it together,” Webb said.
Comment: This is the beginning of the media campaign to sell the town on a new fire station. From what I observed at this presentation, the fire department is asking for a full menu of amenities in this firehouse, including offices for all fire officers, a training center, ambulance station, police station, and down the road expansion to include a town hall.
The proposal made was to situate the new station on what could be considered by most to be a prime piece of commercial real estate. Currently the assessed value is around a quarter of a million dollars, with the caveat that a piece of it was recently sold to Liquid Art for expansion of their parking area. A nearby like parcel is assessed at about three quarters of a million and is not on the access road. Thus I can reasonably conclude the asking price for the parcel would be close to a million if not more, even though it's apparently been taxed at the quarter million assessment for years (and what is that all about?).
The proposal is posted on the town website http://www.killingtontown.com/vertical/sites/%7BE4345A2E-9636-47A3-9B74-2E6220745729%7D/uploads/Killington_Fire_Dept_Facilities_Update_Presentation_-_Final_9-23-14.pdf .
The cost of option 4 in all its iterations 4, 4a and 4b, would run anywhere from 4.4 to close to 12 million dollars. Option 4 is the one most everyone agreed made the most sense (if the voters determine there is a need to upgrade). It should be noted that one of the main reasons the fire department is looking for a bigger firehouse is that they committed to buying a fire engine that is too big to fit in the current firehouse - a little bit of the tail wagging the dog there.
Vito
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