“We just want to express our desire to do it as cheaply and as cost efficient for the public as we can.”
Joe Lenderman of Gloucester Volunteer Fire and Rescue, along with architect Keith Driscoll of Little Diversified Architectural Consulting, provided a brief presentation to the Gloucester Board of Supervisors last Thursday in the T.C. Walker Education Center auditorium to discuss the construction of the new GVFRS Station One.
The current size of the facility is 12,000 square feet, but the station needs to expand to 25,000 square feet. The station’s current limitations include undersized apparatus bays, no contamination zone separation between living quarters and the apparatus bays, minimal accessibility compliance, and finite accommodations for staff who are there 24 hours a day.
“As the county gets more populated, the department is going to be transitioning more from a respond-from-home model to something that is staffed 24/7,” said Driscoll. “And the facilities in the station don’t meet those kinds of requirements and best practices.”
Before construction of a new building was considered, GVFRS discussed renovating the current facility.
“Because of all the different construction types, the mechanical systems, the different floor levels, renovating was simply not feasible,” said Driscoll.
In addition, building a new station at the current site was not possible also because a temporary station would need to be built while the new building was being constructed at a cost of $1.5 million.
The new facility would be complementary to the rest of Main Street, red brick, white trim and some cast stone elements were selected as the material choices for the new Station One.
The new facility will be separated in two buildings, the fire station (administration, bunk rooms, showers, living quarters for staff, apparatus bay) and the education building (three small classrooms, one large meeting room).
“This was separated off with the idea that it could be used independently from the fire station so operations for emergency services wouldn’t be impacted by anything that’s going on in this building,” said Driscoll.
“We have routinely said that we would like to keep ownership of this building,” said Lenderman.
As part of his statements, Lenderman said GVFRS will comply with the high efficiency building model, possibly making it a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified building, as designed by the U.S. Green Building Council.
So far, GVFRS has spent more than $2.2 million of its own funds on the Station One project, including the purchase of the property (over $1.4 million), demolition of structures ($83,061), property tax expense ($25,071), phase one resource reports ($7,000), property appraisal ($13,050) and architectural and engineering expenses ($606,842).
Lenderman said that GVFRS is willing to draw up a contract to turn over all GVFRS properties and equipment to the county if it can no longer fulfill its obligations to provide emergency services, contribute $1 million to start the process of construction and turn over the current properties on Main Street still owned by GVFRS at the end of the new construction project and beginning of operations at the new station.
Supervisor Phil Bazzani asked if the main building and the education building could be condensed into one building instead of constructing two separate buildings to potentially save on costs.
“Not only sometimes do we have 50 or 60 people for our trainings, but on our monthly meetings and other events, we could easily hit 100,” said Lenderman. “With 165 members, that is our area to get together and have our meetings and so forth.”
Supervisor Tony Nicosia said that he has been in the Station One building when it has reached maximum capacity with all training spaces filled.
“When I sat on the [GVFRS] board, we’ve had board meetings in alternate locations to give up our space so that they can train,” said Nicosia.
Board vice chair Ashley Chriscoe spoke on the ownership of the new Station One property.
“I think being that we don’t own any other fire stations in the county, I don’t think we need to get into owning a fire station for this one because they’re willing to turn these things over to us at such time that they’re unable to fulfill their duties,” said Chriscoe.
GVFRS is also responsible for taking care of maintenance issues at their current buildings, saving an expense for the county.
It would be about a 14-month construction process from start to finish,” said Driscoll.
Another issue brought up was that of making the building LEED certified, which could raise the cost of the project. If the station were to be turned back over to the county, the building would need that LEED certification since all government-owned buildings over 20,000 square feet are required by state law to have to meet that certification.
“LEED has been a voluntary program for us, anybody in Gloucester, but it hasn’t been mandated until now,” said County Administrator Carol Steele.
County Attorney Ted Wilmot raised several questions that both the board and GVFRS need to come into agreement, including the funding mechanism, the amount to be funded, where the structure will be built, whether the county has any design input, whether the building project goes through the county procurement process, and much more.
“I think each of us in this room have a different opinion as to the correct answers to those questions,” said Wilmot.
His suggestion was to create a committee of two board members and two GVFRS members to hammer out a tentative possible plan that is agreeable to the committee to bring back to both entities for approval.
Chair Kevin Smith and Chriscoe will serve on the committee with GVFRS president Bruce Soles, Sean McNulty and Brian VanAtta representing Gloucester Volunteer Fire and Rescue.