Please do not leave this page until complete. This can take a few moments.
Courtesy / WBRC
A rendering shows the planned $13 million fire station in Brunswick, seen from the corner of Webster Street, to the left of the image, and Pleasant Street, or U.S. Route 1, to the right.
After decades of public debate, the town of Brunswick and a South Portland contractor expect to sign a $9.15 million agreement as soon as Wednesday to break ground on what could be one of the largest fire stations in Maine.
The 26,000-square-foot, seven-bay facility would be built by Ledgewood Construction, if the Brunswick Town Council green-lights the contract in a meeting Tuesday evening. Ledgewood submitted the low bid in a competitive procurement that drew proposals from 10 Maine construction companies, according to a town memo in support of the contract.
Ledgewood spokeswoman Lisa Beeler on Monday told Mainebiz the firm is ready to ink the deal and could begin work on the firehouse, at the corner of Pleasant and Webster streets, next week. She expects construction to take about 16 months.
“This has been a long time coming for the citizens of Brunswick,” she said.
Brunswick Fire Chief Kenneth Brillant said a new, central fire station has been considered for about 40 years.
The current station is 101 years old and “antiquated at best,” he told Mainebiz. “The building is not designed for current apparatus and it lacks much needed storage and administrative space.”
Plans by WBRC Architects-Engineers call for the new station to be roughly triple the size of the one it will replace, whose small vehicle bays also limit accessibility — they were designed for horse-drawn firefighting equipment.
In 2017, the town created a task force to consider alternatives to the facility. Two years later, the town council rejected a proposal to replace it at a cost of $15 million, despite widespread public support. Ultimately, the council voted to bond $13.5 million for the replacement.
That cost includes $2 million that has already been spent to acquire property at the site, which comprises eight former lots and covers 2.4 acres. It’s about a mile from downtown and three blocks from the Brunswick police headquarters, which Ledgewood built in 2013 at a cost of $5.5 million.
The new fire station will accommodate five on-duty responders, as well as the administrative staff of the 41-member department. There will be bunk rooms, kitchenettes, offices, meeting rooms, 60 parking spaces and even a museum for Brunswick’s firefighting service, which was established in 1810. All in, the town now projects costs to run slightly over $13 million.
Besides tripling the space available in the old station, the new one represents about twice the square footage of Brunswick’s fire substation in Cooks Corner. That facility, which houses a four-person crew, was built 15 years ago by Ouellet Construction for $2.25 million.
The footprint and price tag of the new central firehouse may also outsize some similar projects, both recent and planned, as municipalities across Maine replace aging public safety buildings.
In Lewiston, exterior work is nearly complete on a $4.7 million, three-bay fire substation being built by Great Falls Construction. Over the next several years the city plans to replace two more substations, after a 2017 study found them in need of overhaul.
Portland completed a similar study in 2018, which recommended replacing five of its seven mainland fire stations, including the landmark central station, built in 1925. So far, no new firehouses are in the works, although the city has been making repairs and renovations where it can.
Across the Fore River, another 2018 study found a South Portland fire station in need of replacement, at an estimated cost of $3.4 million.
Bangor replaced a 4,800-square-foot fire station 10 years ago with an 8,900-square-foot one, at a cost of $2.4 million. Augusta recently completed a $6 million rebuild of its primary station, also a century old, along with an 11,600-square- foot addition. Hallowell built a 5,300-square-foot station in 2018 with $2 million in gifts from an anonymous donor, and is now beginning to restore its 193-year-old former station for other uses.
In Yarmouth, Landry/French Construction is putting the finishing touches on an $8.5 million, 27,000-square-foot public safety building, and in May 2020 completed an even larger one in Scarborough.
That complex sprawls 53,000 square feet and cost over $21 million. But the large numbers reflect the fact that the Scarborough site, like the Yarmouth one, house both fire and police forces.
Replacing a municipal fire station is an expensive undertaking, wherever it takes place, and one that is becoming more common nationwide.
Like Brunswick’s current central station, many were built before the days of motorized fire trucks and heavy equipment. Other firehouses were built as those vehicles and apparatus first began use.
Fire stations typically have a life of about 50 years, experts say, and many facilities were replaced in the 1960s and 1970s. That’s around the time many fire departments took on additional responsibilities, such as providing emergency medical services. The growth of suburbs also created new geographic demands for firefighters.
Now a new generation of stations are going into service, and their planners often must take into account factors such as sustainability and the increasing number of women firefighters. New stations are even abandoning the iconic fire pole, which is often a source of injuries, the National Fire Protection Association reported in 2010.
Perhaps it's no wonder that state and local governments are spending close to $2 billion a year in fire station construction, according to a 2018 report by a Minnesota-based consultant, SEH Inc.
Back in Brunswick, Brillant put the size of the new station in perspective.
He said he felt the new station is “about on par” with other recent facilities. It’s also designed to accommodate future needs as the town, which has a population of 20,000, grows.
And Brillant said the new station isn’t as large as it might seem.
“It certainly looks big on paper, but because it is a single story and not two-story, it looks bigger.”
0 Comments