By Alan M. Petrillo
Schreiber Starling Whitehead (SSW) Architects had designed several fire stations and a number of other projects for the Seattle (WA) Fire Department, so it was no surprise that the city came back to SSW for two fire stations that required different designs in dissimilar neighborhoods. And, those two stations earned both Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold awards and Honor Awards from the Fire Industry Education Resource Organization (F.I.E.R.O.). "We've done fire stations and other projects for the city, and helped them in the preparation for the levy that generated funding for the project to build 15 new stations and renovate and upgrade the rest of them," says Keith Schreiber, principal at SSW Architects. "The city had created a fire station design manual that prescribed the programmatic aspects of all their fire stations, but not the design."
Schreiber notes that Seattle's fire station design manual set out the parameters for various size stations: neighborhood one, two, and three and a battalion station. "The program identified what is standard for elements such as bunking, turnout gear storage, kitchen and dining sizes, apparatus bays, and storage options," he says. "We had worked with the city in the past on new stations and remodels to deal with seismic upgrades."
Fire Station 28, the first of the two, which was completed in 2009, cost $7.2 million and was initially conceived as a renovation project. However, at some point, it was decided to build a new station, which SSW had to accomplish by designing and building a fire station in an L-shape around the existing facility. Once the new station was in service, the old station was demolished. The advantage to building next to the existing station while it continued to operate, Schreiber says, "is the saved cost of temporarily relocating those operations. We built the new station five feet away from the existing building, and once the new one was operational, we demolished the old station, but used its basement as a cistern to collect storm water that is reused for irrigation and vehicle washing."
Fire Station 38, completed in 2011 at a construction cost of $3.8 million, is a smaller urban site that once was a gasoline station, Schreiber points out. "There had been fuel leakage into the soil over the years so we had to decontaminate the site," he says. "We drilled wells to remove the hydrocarbons, and replaced the top four feet of the soil on the entire site."
Both Station 28 and 38 are built on rock pilings, Schreiber says. "Because of the type of soils, we had to drill down 12 feet and put in compacted stone to create a geo-pier," he says. "The piers are placed roughly four feet on center over the entire footprint of each station, and then standard foundations and slabs are placed over that. The geo-piers provide stable soil for the stations and meet the essential facility crit