With more space for firefighters and vehicles, a new fire station planned in the Center Grove area will help the fire department keep up with the rapidly growing community.
The White River Township Fire Department plans to begin construction on a $7.5 million fire station this fall. The new building, to be constructed on land purchased from Center Grove schools at the intersection of Morgantown and Fairview roads, will be about 33 percent larger than the one it is replacing.
White Rive Fire Department Station 53, which was built in 2001 near the intersection of State Road 37 and Smith Valley Road, will be torn down to make way for Interstate 69 and the interchange with Smith Valley Road.
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Federal laws requires replacing any fire stations or other emergency services that must be relocated due to a construction project. Full replacement means constructing a building that is a functional equivalent of the current one, but because of how the department has grown since 2011, just replacing the building wasn’t going to be enough, Fire Chief Jeremy Pell said.
The number of calls the fire department responded to in 2001, when Station 53, opened, was 1,370. Last year, they responded to a record-high 3,170 calls and are on pace to equal or surpass that number this year, Pell said. In 2001, the department would have 10 firefighters on duty at any given time. Now that number is 21, he said.
The growth from new home and businesses is expected to be accompanied by a temporary spike from crashes while I-69 is being built, meaning an increasing number of calls, Pell said.
A larger, 6,000-square-foot station will include a meeting room, where all of their firefighters can gather at once, as well as more room for additional firefighters and vehicles, he said. The goal is for the building to be able to serve the community for several decades, he said.
Final designs for the station are set to be complete in July, and county and state officials will have to approve the plans before construction can begin in September. Work on the building is expected to last a year, allowing it to open well in advance of work on I-69, Pell said.
The fire department agreed to contribute about $1 million in addition to the money the Indiana Department of Transportation is paying for the new fire station. Not knowing for sure if the state was going to cover the cost of a new station, the fire department had been saving money to do the project themselves, and will pay its costs from savings, Pell said.
Earlier this year, the Center Grove school board approved selling up to 5.6 acres of land at the southwest corner of Fairview and Morgantown roads to the fire department for the project. The property purchase will be paid for by the state, but won’t be finalized until the building designs are completed because the state will only purchase the amount of land needed for the project, Pell said.
