THE JOURNAL & TOPICS NEWSPAPERS | FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2008
Fire Station Moving Forward
By RICHARD MAYER
Assistant Managing Editor
A village board workshop is expected to be take place sometime in December, according to Fire Chief Mike Figolah and Village Manager Michael Janonis, to move forward with constructing a new $8.5 million, 20,000 sq. ft. Fire Station 14 on Kensington Road. However, a date has not yet been set for that workshop.
"We (fire department and architects) have come up with a full scale drawing for an Emergency Operations Center (EOC), and we also just want to finalize some of the plans we have talked about already for the new fire station," said Figolah. "We just want to make sure the board agrees with the plans before we move any further." Figolah said if the board approves all design plans for the fire station during next month's workshop, then a public hearing would be scheduled sometime in early January so residents can chime in with what they think the building should look like.
"We are still on track to begin construction in the spring," said Figolah. Over the last four or five weeks, architects from Deerfield-based SRBL Architects, the firm hired to design the new fire station, have been looking at costs associated with hardening benchmarks, because it could affect how the building will look.
Figolah said it might change the proposed glass on the building and affect the fire department's and village's annual budget.
The basic architectural design can withstand 90 mph winds, but fire department officials along with the architects, are currently trying to figure out if that's sufficient. Additionally, if an earthquake should occur in this area, architects are trying to determine if the new building would remain intact.
Bids to construct the new station are expected to go out to vendors by January or February the latest, so board members can approve the expense and construction can begin sometime in April. Once construction begins, it is expected to take between nine and 11 months to complete.