When the community stepped inside St. George’s new Fire Station 1 during the open house on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2025, they saw far more than modern equipment bays and gleaming engines, the city said in a press release. 

They walked into a space that symbolizes the city’s promise to honor its past while protecting its future. Amid the station’s advanced training rooms, community gathering areas and expanded living quarters, the memory of the Flood Street Chapel remains very much alive.

For decades, that chapel served as a spiritual and social cornerstone for St. George families. Today, the land carries forward that same sense of purpose — now dedicated to public safety and service.

“This station is truly about honoring our past with an eye to the future,” said St. George Chief Robert Stoker, who recently celebrated 40 years with the department. “We’ve built a facility that recognizes where we came from and prepares us for where St. George is going.”

The property’s history stretches back to the early 1950s, when Bishop Wilford Schmutz of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, acquired the parcel from Dan Seegmiller for $1,800 to build the Flood Street Chapel.

According to the Washington County Historical Society, the chapel was dedicated around 1955. The chapel served the city’s 5th and 6th wards and quickly became a center of community life. Its recreation hall echoed with ward plays, youth basketball games, wedding receptions, and family reunions.

The St. George East Stake President Lance Greer remembered some of the community’s diversity through events like luaus and Hispanic celebrations. Another memory he shared was a spectacular Christmas display and mural by renowned artist Greg Abbott, a member of the church.

“There were certainly many events that we participated in that bring back a lot of memories,” Lance said.

By 2021, structural issues forced the building’s closure. The city of St. George purchased the property for $1.1 million. When demolition began in December 2022, residents arrived to collect leftover bricks, small, tangible pieces of history. Today, that spirit of gathering continues, as a new generation will enter a site dedicated to rescue, readiness and response.

The new Fire Station 1, encompassing more than 23,000 square feet, replaces the former 8,500-square-foot structure on 1000 East and consolidates operations from both Station 1 and Station 2 on North Main.

The new building also provides a community room for meetings, developer consultations, instruction and dedicated training for the fire crew. According to Chief Stoker, the facility represents a significant leap forward for both efficiency and well-being.

“It’s built for the future, where if we have multiple crews running out of this station, they’re able to have the room as we grow and expand,” Stoker said.

The new building will be able to accommodate a lot of administrative staff downstairs, as well as on-duty crews. The second floor will feature improved living quarters for firefighters, including private bedrooms, a spacious kitchen and day room and separate restrooms and showers.

“You want to be able to give them an area where they can just decompre

Jeremy Boyer
syracuse.com
(TNS)

Syracuse, N.Y. — Part of a massive furniture store on Syracuse’s South Side could soon become the city fire department’s maintenance facility.

The Syracuse Common Council approved a series of resolutions Monday authorizing an estimated $5.7 million project to turn a portion of the Dunk & Bright furniture complex on South Salina Street into the Syracuse Fire Department’s main garage.

The department needs a new facility for doing repairs on its fleet of more than 100 vehicles because the floor of its longtime maintenance garage partially collapsed in July, forcing the department to close the facility for safety reasons.

That garage, near the fire department’s training facility on State Fair Boulevard, was built in 1969 and not designed for the size of many of today’s larger fire apparatus.

Fire Chief Michael Monds has been working with the council’s Public Safety Committee, chaired by Councilor Chol Majok, the city’s deputy commissioner of asset management and the finance department to find a new home and figure out how to pay for it.

A request for proposals returned an unexpected opportunity — the chance to buy part of an iconic furniture store property that’s operated at the corner of South Salina Street and West Brighton Avenue since 1927.

Dunk & Bright owner Joe Bright said the 25,000-square-foot showroom area — which currently houses dining room, bedroom and clearance items — is more space than his business needs. Even after that part of the building is sold, the company will have one of the largest furniture showrooms in the region with 57,000 square feet.

Bright saw the city’s request for proposals and didn’t hesitate to respond.

“It seemed like it was written for this part of our building,” he said.

Monds is hopeful the new garage can be in operation by late spring.

The council authorized spending $100,000 for a down payment using money in the department’s capital project reserve fund. It also approved borrowing up to $1.6 million to use toward the purchase of the property, which includes two vacant lots next to the part of the building the city would buy. The city’s assessment department estimates full value for the entire building at about $3 million.

Another $4 million bond councilors approved would pay for the renovation work needed to make the building functional as a fire department garage.

Since the department’s old maintenance facility shut down, the fire department’s mechanics have been doing much of their work outdoors, which is not a long-term option, Monds said. Syracuse University has also allowed the city to use some of its garage space when indoor work is needed.

Monds and Bright both said it will help the South Salina Street neighborhood to have another visible employer operating there.

“Having more neighbors is a positive,” Bright said.

The fire chief also praised all the city staff and lawmakers for working together to address a pressing need so quickly.

“The process made me feel good,” Monds said.

©2025 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit syracuse.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Foam use in the fire service varies from department to department and what is being protected. In recent years, the fire service has transitioned from fluorinated foams, like aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) to fluorine-free foams, also known as F3. A lot goes into creating effective foams, and one company that produces them, Perimeter Solutions, not only has five chemists that are constantly creating new formulations but also has a robust testing center on its Green Bay, Wisconsin, campus and education program for the fire service.

HISTORY

Perimeter Solutions is the fire safety industry’s only full service solutions provider offering products, equipment, personnel, logistics and service, according to Mark Siem, manager of business development/chemist at the company.

The company’s roots go back to 1963 when PHOS-CHEK retardants were first introduced. Then in the 1980s, PHOS-CHEK WD881 was the first Class A foam on the US Forest Service’s qualified products list. That company started as part of Monsanto. From the late 1990s until 2021 it went through a series of acquisitions and became a public company in 2021. Between the 1960s and 2021, there were a number of changes in ownership, but also a number of acquisitions that broadened what the company could offer, with one of those acquisitions being the SOLBERG foam concentrate business in 2018. The combination of these acquisitions created what is now known as Perimeter Solutions and preceded another series of acquisitions that increased the company’s offerings.

There are three different groups that make up Perimeter Solutions that are run individually: suppressants, retardants, and specialty chemicals. The retardant products go by PHOS-CHEK, and firefighting foams use SOLBERG as the brand name. SOLBERG has a long history of firefighting Class B foams, and it started making fluorine-free foams in the early 2000s.

RESEARCH CAPABILITIES

Perimeter Solutions provides research and development capabilities that include an onsite test center that will test various foam formulations develo