White River Township Fire Department has started construction on a project that’s been expected for years — building a new fire station headquarters that will be needed when Interstate 69 forces the closure of an existing station.
The new, larger headquarters is being built in front of a Center Grove elementary school.
Safety was the top priority as fire department leaders, school officials and Indiana Department of Transportation representatives worked to determine the location and design. The location of the new station provides an additional level of safety for the children in school next door, and gives the fire department quick access to Morgantown Road, which is a major north-south route through the Center Grove area.
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The next obstacle was determining how to keep traffic flowing as parents, school buses and employees travel to and from Pleasant Grove Elementary and firefighters head to emergencies.
Traffic lights will be added where the connector road from the school and fire station intersects with both Morgantown and Fairview roads. That will allow firefighters and school officials to control traffic during peak times in the mostly residential area.
“I actually think it gives us an opportunity to improve (traffic flow). The school has already put a lot of work into this infrastructure with the connector drives and they have adjusted their traffic flow,” Fire Chief Jeremy Pell said.
“If the school would like to use those (lights) for their school buses, we can trip those and get the fire trucks and/or buses out of the way, and then turn it back to green so that traffic is flowing again.”
The move comes as INDOT prepares to build Interstate 69 through Johnson County. The station that is being replaced is near the intersection of State Road 37 and Smith Valley Road.
It will be demolished once the new station opens in November 2019.
The current station is about 17,000 square feet. The new one will be closer to 24,000 square feet. The bigger station will accommodate more people and more modern fire trucks, Pell said. Firefighters who work in the building will also have a larger meeting space to gather as a group.
“We’re having to adjust for 20 years of growth,” he said. “We have a much bigger department now. We have more full-time people. We have more people on duty at any given time.”
The existing Station 53 was built in 2001. At that time, Center Grove had significantly fewer residents. The department made 1,370 runs that year. By comparison, White River Township fire crews made 3,170 runs in 2017.
This year, the department has about 10 runs a day on average, Pell said.
The new station will cost $7.5 million, with INDOT paying for most of it. Federal law requires that the state pay for the relocation of the fire station because the move is due to a construction project. The fire department will contribute about $1 million. Center Grove Schools sold the 2.3-acre site to the state and entered a new partnership with the fire department.
“It’s all of us sitting down and saying, ‘What can we do to serve this community better?’ We all have the same goal and that is to take care of the people who have entrusted us to take care of them. The school wants to do the best they can to make sure they have a safe environment. We want to do the best we can to make sure we have good response times. Together, we want to improve the quality of life and be there when people have a crisis or emergency, and this is what we came up with,” Pell said.
“Without their partnership, we don’t have this piece of ground. They helped us find this excellent location that puts us close to the kids and gives us a great north-south corridor. This is the kind of partnership that we read about, but we don’t get to see very often.”
School officials told the crowd of public safety workers, educators and residents who gathered for the groundbreaking that they are excited about the partnership.
“I can’t think of a better way to protect these beautiful buildings behind us than to put public safety right out in front of it,” school board president Scott Alexander said.
A committee made up of firefighters who will work at the station reviewed and approved design plans as they were developed.
“The way this station was designed went through the firefighters,” Pell said. “They’re the ones who are going to be there every day.”
