Wales fire station plans moving forward
By Doug Lowe
Staff writer
6-25-2020
WALES—Long delayed plans to construct a new fire station took an important step forward during the June meeting of the town council.
After being approved by the CIB (Community Impact Board) for a $500,000 grant and $104,000 loan for construction of a larger, more up-to-date fire station, plans languished for months when Fire Chief James Roberts found it difficult to locate an architectural or engineering firm willing to take on the project within the confines of its $604,000 budget.
As Chief Roberts puts it, “We’ve needed a much bigger and better station for a long time. With the new equipment we’ve added over the years, our old building has become too crowded, so we are very excited to finally being moving toward construction.”
Wales Mayor Nathan Mitchell agrees with Roberts. “We now have the ball rolling, and our architect, Guil Rand, has come up with some real improvements to our initial plans,” he said.
The architect, Guilford Rand, with the Architectural Coalition in Springville, who has been working on the plans for over a month now, presented new drawings to the town council during their meeting on the evening of June 2.
According to Rand, he had to bring the city’s roughly sketched plan up to all applicable building codes. He also suggested and received approval for other changes to make the structure function more efficiently.
Like the town’s old fire station, new facility will be a steel building located more-or-less behind town hall. The building lot, which begins at the north side of the old fire station and extends all the way to 200 North, will enable the new station’s three bays to have doors on both ends to enter and exit from both the north and west.
According to Town Recorder Vela Lee Sherman, “Thanks to a donation years ago, our fire department has the only vehicle extraction equipment located in the north end of the county. So, the ability to pull out of the station quickly can be a matter of saving lives, not just property.”
