Selectmen Back New Fire Station — With Its $8.5M Price Tag
By Alexandra Mayer-Hohdahl, The Sun, Lowell, Mass.
Feb. 7–TEWKSBURY — Ambulances that cannot be kept warm enough to comfortably transport a patient.
Emergency medical technicians who have set up shop in a closet.
Ceiling tiles that come crashing to the ground during open houses.
And the biggest irony of all — a fire station without a fire alarm.
Selectmen last night were won over by a proposal to replace the aging Center Fire Station with a brand-new building to the tune of about $8.5 million — a project that may be taken up by Town Meeting as early as May.
“There’s absolutely no question that we need to do something,” Selectman Joe Gill said. “The question is what it will be, and that’s up to the voters.”
The Fire Department Long-Range Planning Committee is recommending constructing a new 18,500-square foot new facility instead of renovating the existing 40-year-old building, because of its numerous deficiencies.
A renovation and expansion would cost between $3 million and $4 million.
“It’s a worn-out building,” Fire Chief Richard Mackey told selectmen yesterday. “It’s just not keeping up anymore. Do we want to spend good money on a bad building?”
The plan for a new fire station, if funded by a Proposition 2 1/2 debt exclusion, would cost the average homeowner, with a house valued at $376,600, about $51 a year until the debt is repaid, Town Manager David Cressman noted.
The new station, designed by the Hopkinton-based Carell Group, would be made up of two floors to separate public and private spaces — a feature woefully lacking in the existing station, architect Gregory Carell said.
The first floor would house offices, the station’s communication center and a meeting room that would be used for training sessions, be open to the public and serve as a backup emergency operations center.
Toward the rear of the building would be six drive-through bays for fire engines and ambulances, as well as a tower in which to hang drying hoses and conduct training. A decontamination area and ample storage space would be nearby.
The second floor, meanwhile, would house a fitness room and the firefighters’ living quarters, including separate male and female lockers, toilets and showers. The current station has no separate facilities.
“I think the community would be well-served with this endeavor,” Gill said.
“It just makes good sense to do this,” Selectmen Chairman Charles Coldwell added. “This is a department that serves everybody.”
In other business, several selectmen bashed what they called unreasonably high rates for the town’s inspections of backflow prevention devices.
The matter was brought before the board by local developer Edward Doherty, who said he pays $2,000 twice a year for the town to spend no more than an hour-and-half inspecting the 20 state-mandated devices at his Rogers Common 40B development.
“I have the feeling that we have once again arrived (at a way) to generate funds under some regulation,” Selectman John Ryan said. “I want to make sure it’s fair. I want to see what the town does for $4,000 (a year).”
Cressman noted that selectmen had voted last year to approve a $100-per-device inspection fee, but the board yesterday voted to ask Lewis Zediana, the chief operating engineer of the town’s water division, to compile a report detailing the work and the time spent on such inspections.
Alexandra Mayer-Hohdahl’s e-mail address is amayer-hohdahl@lowellsun.com.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Sun, Lowell, Mass.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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