Multi-million-dollar upgrade to be complete within two-plus
years
The $5 million revamp of Hollister’s downtown fire station,
which originally was built as a tractor garage in the 1930s, began
this week as city officials met with the architecture and design
firm hired to create a new look for the building.
”
We’re getting ready to go into the design period of that
project,
”
said Renee Perales, projects coordinator for the Redevelopment
Agency. The creation of drawings and building specs along with the
bidding process for the construction will take approximately 17
months.
Multi-million-dollar upgrade to be complete within two-plus years
The $5 million revamp of Hollister’s downtown fire station, which originally was built as a tractor garage in the 1930s, began this week as city officials met with the architecture and design firm hired to create a new look for the building.
“We’re getting ready to go into the design period of that project,” said Renee Perales, projects coordinator for the Redevelopment Agency. The creation of drawings and building specs along with the bidding process for the construction will take approximately 17 months.
“The demolition of the current building and reconstruction will take a little over a year,” she said, meaning the new fire station should be up and running in two-and-a-half years.
The city purchased the old garage in 1968 and converted it into a fire station. Hollister opened a second fire station, at the corner of Union Road and Airline Highway, in February 2005.
“We’re looking for more functional office space and a more customer-friendly atmosphere,” said Chief Fred Cheshire.
The station, located on the 100 block of Fifth Street, will be converted from a single-story building into a two- or three-story building.
“Because we’ll be more than a single story, we’d like to have an exterior stairwell so we can practice carrying a hose up the stairs and doing hose lays,” Cheshire said. “We’d also like to have some anchor points on the roof so we can do over-the-edge training.”
The square footage of the new station has not been determined, though the building will be constructed using the current station’s footprint.
A classroom setting will offer more space for training, so that all fire personnel can be in the same room at the same time, Cheshire said, noting that can’t happen now because of space restrictions. Living quarters will likely be on the second floor, with administrative offices and the fire fighting apparatus on the ground floor.
Cheshire said he is not sure if a fire pole, a staple of multiple-story stations, will be included in the new design, though he did say the feature “would make it a fire station.”
During the construction phase, some firefighters and administrators will be housed in Fire Station No. 2, while Cheshire indicated that temporary housing will need to be secured for an engine company to maintain its downtown presence.
“We want to make sure we maintain coverage for downtown, the west side and north end of town,” he said. “We don’t want to sacrifice that.”
The current Fire Station No. 1 has shown signs of its age recently with broken pipes and holes in the roof.
“We had to stop all training in order to patch the pipe,” Cheshire said. “I’d feel ridiculous spending money on a new pipe that will eventually be torn out anyway. Another leak developed over our communication room so we had to move anything that was of any value out of there.”
A series of bonds were issued by the RDA in July to provide financing for the project. The contract with WLC Architects Inc. for the design phase is $638,000.
Federal grant helps outfit local firefighters
Hollister firefighters will upgrade their protective equipment through a more than $41,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the United States Department of Homeland Security.
The city will pay 10 percent – or roughly $4,100 – toward the cost of the equipment, which will replace items that have not been upgraded during the past five years.
“The money is for our personal protective equipment along with our structural and wildland fire fighting clothing,” said Fire Chief Fred Cheshire. “Over the last five years, we haven’t been ordering enough replacements annually. This grant will allow us to catch back up and erase that deficit.”
Without suitable replacement equipment, a firefighter whose gear is exposed to bodily fluids or torn during a call damaged by soot and smoke from a structure fire, for example, would be out of service until that equipment was repaired or decontaminated.
The additional equipment will allow all crew members to remain ready to respond.
Previously, Cheshire said, “if a guy’s equipment was contaminated, he’d be out of service because we had only issued one set of safety equipment per individual.”
The money will fund, among other things, wildland shelters that individual firefighters can deploy for protection if they are overrun by a fire.
