Beaver Dam should build a new fire station rather than renovate the existing 65-year-old facility that isn’t designed for modern times, the architect studying the issue told the Common Council on Monday.
The city also may potentially benefit from a second fire station.
The Beaver Dam City Council approved an agreement in January for contracting services with Five Bugles Design to conduct a needs analysis and assess conditions at the Fire Department building and City Hall and Laura Eysnogle, an architect for the firm, gave an update this week.
“The facility has served you guys really well for a long time, but if we were to stay on this property, I would recommend raising the facility and starting over,” Eysongle said.
Constructed in 1959, the building has had numerous additions, but it is landlocked, she said. The municipal building is bordered by streets on three sides and has houses behind it, preventing additional growth of the lot.
“The apparatuses have grown significantly since then and at the time, fire service was a male-dominated industry,” she said. “There were no such things as female firefighters. All those things have changed since then.”
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“I would love to see it come back but people have to realize they have to support it,” Mary Vogl-Rauscher said.
Five Bugles Design did study the possibility of renovating the existing fire department but found a lot of logistical problems. Among them: That the city would have to find a way to operate a fire department during the renovation and the building would have to be brought up to current code, Eysongle said.
“Renovating this building will be expensive,” she said. “It will be a complete overhaul.”
The city would have to decide it the current municipal building is worth saving, she said. And building something new brings a bunch of other questions, including whether a new facility that is up to code could fit on the current site and whether the city should consider adding a second fire station.
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“You get fresh, local food, get a great social outing, and support your community— all in one stop,” Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Tracy Propst said.
The next step in the study is a geographic information study that will map out all the fire department’s service calls and look at how long it takes to get from the station to the service site.
Ald. Mick Fischer said the growth with businesses on the north side of the city is also something to consider.
Notably, Generac is nearing completion on a 300,000-square-foot facility to produce industrial generators that is expected to employ about 350 people. And a$1 billion data center is being built on the 834 acres of property that the city annexed into Beaver Dam in September.
“With the addition of Generac and this new AI facility, we are going to be bringing people into Beaver Dam,” Fischer said.
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Figuring out which direction the city should take to provide fire services is expected to take years.