The North West Fire District is planning to build a four-bay response station for the Baldwinsville Fire Department on Smokey Hollow Road.
The fire district will seek the village’s permission to build the station in a Planned Development District; a public hearing will be held at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 21, at the Village Board of Trustees meeting.
Fire Commissioner Jack Klein said the station would be strictly for responding to emergencies and not for community events. It will not have a siren.
The fire district purchased 6.75 acres from St. Mary’s Apartments for $100,000 in 2014, one year after the fire protection districts in Baldwinsville and Lysander consolidated under the NWFD.
“We knew when we merged we’d have to replace the old Station 3. It’s not a fire station, it’s an old highway garage,” NWFD Chief Tom Perkins said of the station on Elizabeth Street.
Perkins and Klein said the fire district had plans for the new station at the time of the 2013 merger but did not expect the proposal to move so quickly. The fire district is eligible for a $6 million low-interest rural development loan from the United States Department of Agriculture, but the USDA deadline is July 1.
“We have to move fast so the funding doesn’t dry up,” Perkins said.
If the NWFD misses the deadline, the decision to apply funding moves from New York to Washington, D.C. The district could still apply for the loan, but it would be competing nationally instead of locally.
The $6 million loan would allow the NWFD to purchase existing buildings from the Baldwinsville Fire Department, construct the new station and pay for an addition to Station 1, which would include a meeting room, kitchen, office space and restrooms. The district’s goal is to avoid increasing taxes to pay for the proposed Smokey Hollow Road station.
The loan’s initial interest rate is 3.5 percent, but the district could secure a rate as low as 3.1 percent depending on when the sale of the BFD buildings closes.
Currently, the NWFD leases Stations 1 and 2 from the BFD; a condition of the USDA funding is that the fire district acquire those stations.
“This is part of a very big financial [restructure] of the North West Fire District,” Klein said.
“No chicken barbecues or breakfasts [will be] coming out of there — it’s not going to be that large,” Perkins said.
The 11,500-square-foot, four-bay station will include a radio room, a lounge and bunk-in rooms for volunteers who are on call, including Onondaga Community College students who volunteer for the fire department.
“It’s a win-win for us because many of the students have classes at night, so it leaves them available to respond to calls during the day,” Perkins said.
Perkins said there are 40 firefighters assigned to Station 3; about 17 or 18 of them live in the immediate area.
The NWFD has submitted a site plan application to the village planning board for review at the board’s May 26 meeting. The proposal will go before the village board at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 21.
