AUGUSTA — A new fire station to serve north Augusta goes to the Planning Board for approval Tuesday, but federal and state environmental permits for the project still need to be secured.
Officials don’t anticipate a problem obtaining those permits, which delayed the project from its original time frame, and hope to start construction on the new station in the spring. Completion could come as soon as a year from now.
“We’re still shooting for construction to start in the spring. That’s our goal,” said Fire Chief Roger Audette. “And we expect it to be completed in late November or December (of next year), right about the time the new ladder truck gets here.”
Voters approved $3.6 million in bonds in a November 2014 referendum vote to build the new station. They also approved $1 million to purchase a new multi-purpose fire truck with a ladder in the same referendum. That truck is expected to be ready to be put in service in the city around the same time as the new station is expected to be complete, and Audette said the new truck will be kept at the new station.
The chief said the new ladder truck will be one of four or five emergency vehicles to be kept there, including a fire engine, an ambulance and a reserve ambulance.
Staffing at the new station will vary and has not yet been finalized. Audette said there will likely be a two-person ambulance crew there during the day and sometimes at night, and two firefighters will be stationed there around the clock.
The new station is expected to speed response times, which are currently longer than officials would like them to be, to the busy commercial area that has taken root in the northern part of the city over the last several years.
Audette said previously response times to north Augusta from existing stations, such as Hartford Station downtown and the Bangor Street station, reached up to seven to 10 minutes.
“We like to get there in under five minutes, and right now, in some cases, we’re over that,” Audette said of response times to emergencies such as fires, medical emergencies and car crashes.
A 2008 study of the city’s fire station locations, staffing and emergency response times by Matrix Consulting Group recommended the city build a new fire station in the Civic Center Drive area near Interstate 95 to speed response times to what was even then a growing commercial area that has continued to see growth, including the construction of a new MaineGeneral Medical Center in the area.
The nearly 10,000-square-foot fire station is considered for zoning purposes to be a government services use, a use that is allowed in the zoning in that area, according to Matt Nazar, the city’s development director.
The concrete and metal building is proposed to be built on a 29-acre city-owned lot currently made up of fields and woods on Leighton Road across from the intersection with Anthony Avenue. The site has access to public water and sewer.
The site is known as the Quimby lot and was bought by the city for $175,000 in 1999 in hopes of using it to attract business to the area. However, the city never drew development to the site. City Manager William Bridgeo said the fire station will take up only a portion of the lot, and the rest could still be developed.
Officials had initially hoped to start construction in the summer of 2015.
However, the unanticipated need for environmental reviews of the project by both the state Department of Environmental Protection and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has delayed the project from keeping with that original time frame, city officials have said.
Nazar said the city is still working to obtain the necessary permits from both the DEP and Army Corps, and receipt of those permits will likely be made a condition of the Planning Board’s approval of the project.
While some permitting had been done on the lot in 2000, Nazar said environmental rules have changed since then with additional reviews of vernal pools and other new requirements.
Nazar said that based upon conversations with officials of both the DEP and Army Corps, he does not anticipate the city having difficulty securing the needed permits from those agencies, likely within the next couple of months.
Nazar said the construction project will involve both a minor wetland impact and a stream crossing, adding to the regulatory review requirements.
The new fire station will have three large vehicle bays and living quarters for firefighters/paramedics, who work 24-hour shifts. Audette said the building will have enough space for up to six employees to be housed there, though there won’t be that many there when it opens. He said the building will be constructed for that many employees in case that many are needed there in the future.
He said the fire department won’t need the Hospital Street fire station once the new station is complete. He said the city will likely sell that property or look for alternative uses for it.
Audette said one challenging aspect of the site is expected to be the soils there. He said preliminary tests have indicated a significant amount of clay in the soil there. He said for the foundation to be stable, it needs to connect to solid rock underground. He said contractors may need to drive steel beams into the ground for the foundation, as was done for the Capital Judicial Center in Augusta.
The Augusta Planning Board will consider approving the project following a major development review at their meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday in council chambers at Augusta City Center.
The board is also scheduled to conduct a major development review of a proposed 202,000-square-foot driveway and parking lot for trucks and employee vehicles at Performance Foodservice — Northcenter’s food distribution operation at 20 Dalton Road off Riverside Drive.
The proposed parking lot property is between a Sherwood Drive residential neighborhood and the Kennebec River. The property is currently accessible from Sherwood Drive, but if the plan is approved, it would be reachable from a driveway that would be built from Northcenter’s existing parking lot to the new lot. Part of the site is now a gravel pit.
Keith Edwards — 621-5647
Twitter: @kedwardskj
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