Aurora (IL) City Council Approves New $35M Fire Department Headquarters

R. Christian Smith
Chicago Tribune
(TNS)

After a maneuver that involved temporarily suspending certain meeting rules, the Aurora City Council approved Tuesday the construction of a new $35 million fire department headquarters building.

The Aurora Fire Department’s new headquarters building, which will also include a relocated Fire Station 4, is set to be located on the site of the current Aurora Police Department headquarters on Indian Trail, creating a combined Aurora Public Safety Campus.

Aurora Fire Department officials have said this new facility will improve the department’s operations in multiple ways, including lower fire and emergency medical response times, much-needed expanded office space for department administration and a new storm-hardened, high-tech Emergency Operations Center.

Aurora aldermen have been publicly discussing the construction of the project across several meetings of various committees since early April. It was delayed in the committee process for several weeks as aldermen debated the project, its price and the process of its design.

At Tuesday’s Aurora City Council meeting, just before it was set to consider the project, the council voted to suspend a city code that would have allowed just two aldermen to delay the project without a full vote.

John Laesch, who was at Tuesday’s meeting as an alderman at-large but was just hours away from being sworn in as the city’s new mayor, confirmed with The Beacon-News on Thursday that he was planning to delay the project.

He wanted to either make minor adjustments to the plan, reducing costs, or redesign it to higher energy efficiency standards, making it eligible for certain grants or bonds, he said on Thursday.

Voting against the suspension of the city code and later against the construction of the fire department headquarters at Tuesday’s meeting were Laesch, Ald. Ted Mesiacos, 3rd Ward, and Ald. Edward Bugg, 9th Ward.

Bugg and Laesch previously used the city code that was suspended at Tuesday’s meeting to delay consideration of a new QuikTrip gas station, which has since been approved.

Although the meeting was opened and later closed by 6th Ward Ald. and Mayor Pro Tem Mike Saville, outgoing Mayor Richard Irvin briefly slowed up to take control of the meeting just before the vote to suspend the rules was taken and left soon after the construction of the fire station was approved.

“I’m here for AFD,” Irvin said after he took over control of the meeting from Saville.

Irvin also specifically voted in favor of suspending the rules even though his vote was not needed. Typically, the mayor only votes to break a tie or in a similar situation.

Ald. Patty Smith, 8th Ward, who made the motion to suspend the city code allowing just two aldermen to delay the project, said at Tuesday’s meeting that she didn’t see any way around building the fire station because otherwise it would leave a fire and emergency response gap in part of the city.

“The safety of our residents should be the number one issue for us, and if it is not your number one issue up here as an alderman, then you’re no more than a politician,” she said.

Aurora Fire Chief David McCabe said at Tuesday’s meeting and past meetings that a 2021 study recommended the relocation of Fire Station 4, which is proposed as a part of this project, along with the relocation of Fire Station 9 and the construction of Fire Station 13 to reduce long response times in the northeast part of the city.

Since both the Fire Station 9 and Fire Station 13 projects are underway, unless Fire Station 4 is also relocated, the higher response times those projects are looking to solve would simply move to a different part of the city, McCabe said.

Ald. Daniel Barreiro, 1st Ward; Ald Carl Franco, 5th Ward; and Saville also spoke in favor of the new fire department headquarters, particularly for public safety reasons.

Although Laesch said he was not trying to stop public safety from moving forward, for those aldermen who were concerned about the impact of a delay, he pointed out that the study recommending the fire station locations to reduce response times was released four years ago.

However, Irvin said the city shouldn’t wait another four or six years to get the project completed since it has already taken this long to plan it out.

“Any interruption in the direction of this now would halt the building of the fire stations that are sorely needed by our community to safeguard lives right now, not at some point in the future,” he said.

Aldermen in favor of the project and Aurora Chief Financial Officer Chris Minick also pointed out that the project will only ever cost more than it does right now, since inflation will increase the cost of construction each year.

The city has also already invested about $1.2 million in the project because of things like design costs and would have to pay an additional $410,000 if the project is stopped, according to Minick. He said that, if the project is delayed three years, it would cost about $40 million, assuming a relatively conservative yearly price increase of 3%, which does not include any potential impact of tariffs.

Currently, the project is expected to cost the city around $34.9 million.

At the Tuesday meeting, the Aurora City Council approved three items related to the fire station project: one was to approve the $29.5 million construction of the new Aurora Fire Department headquarters, another roughly doubled the dollar amount of a contract with Cordogan Clark of Aurora for architectural, design, engineering and construction services to a total cost of around $2.2 million and the last allowed the purchase of technology for the new building costing no more than roughly $1.7 million.

Additional project costs are expected to include utility connections, builders risk insurance and contingencies, according to past reporting.

The Aurora City Council’s Building, Zoning and Economic Development Committee also previously approved resolutions establishing a public safety campus subdivision and setting a plan for the site.

The new fire department headquarters building will be two-story and roughly 29,800 square feet. It is set to have four bays for fire vehicles and three bays for Emergency Management vehicles.

The first floor would hold a lobby, new flexible training rooms, the relocated Fire Station 4 with living space for the firefighters, office space for the Emergency Management Agency and the city’s Emergency Operations Center, which can also function as a storm shelter.

City staff have said this storm-hardened Emergency Operations Center would allow response efforts to continue even during disasters.

The building’s second floor would be devoted to the fire department administrative offices.

Currently, the Aurora Fire Department’s administration works out of the Central Fire Station on Broadway in downtown Aurora. That space is now too small for the department’s needs, McCabe previously said.

Aurora’s Emergency Management Agency, which reports to the fire department, is facing a similar problem at its current location in the Aurora Police Department headquarters building.

Plans for the site of the new Aurora Public Safety Campus also include expanded parking areas, fueling stations for fire trucks and police vehicles and a plaza connecting the existing police headquarters to the proposed fire headquarters building.

Funding for the project would come through general obligation bonds, Minick previously said. The city needs to take out bonds anyway to fund other planned projects, he said, so adding on the new fire headquarters building will only increase the average taxpayer’s monthly bill by roughly $3.

The city would either need to take out bonds for $53.9 million without the proposed fire department headquarters or $88.1 million with the headquarters, he said. Over 30 years, that means a yearly city payment of either $3.6 million or $5.9 million, respectively.

So, over 30 years, the monthly impact of the bond sale on a $300,000 property would be either $4.79 without the fire department headquarters or $7.79 with it, a difference of $3.00, Minick previously estimated.

Irvin first announced at one of his four State of the City addresses last year the city’s plans to expand the site of the current police department headquarters into a public safety campus that would also hold a new Aurora Fire Department headquarters.

At Tuesday’s meeting, his last as mayor, he congratulated the fire department and emergency management department on their new building.

“This is much needed for our community,” he said. “You guys are heroes.”

rsmith@chicagotribune.com

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