Battle Creek seeks public feedback as it explores fire station upgrades
Battle Creek is seeking public feedback as it explores a proposal to upgrade and reimagine its fire stations.
The city will host six community conversations — one at each of its six fire stations — over the next two months to gain feedback and answer questions about the proposal.
The most significant changes center around the city's 100-plus-year-old fire stations — Station 2 on Washington Avenue and Station 3 on Cliff Street — which are "no longer suitable as modern fire station buildings," per the city.
"We can’t really make them bigger to fit the modern fire vehicle," City Manager Rebecca Fleury explained Wednesday. "There are certain vehicles that the Battle Creek Fire Department has that cannot go at either one of those stations because of the way they were designed. They were designed for basically a horse and cart, not for 2024 fire vehicles."
The living quarters are also quite small and difficult to remodel in these aging structures, according to Fleury.
"Any engineering firm that goes in or any consultant we get to take a look at the fire department and their models of service delivery, we’re at the point where they do not recommend us putting any more dollars into (Station 2 and Station 3) because we won’t get it back out," she said. "It’s not a good use of taxpayer dollars at this particular time."
The city proposes building a new Station 2 near its current location and closing Station 3, moving that crew to join the crew at Station 1 on East Michigan Avenue. The city aims to keep the cost of the upgrades somewhere in the range of $20-25 million, according to Fleury.
The city will share new images and cost estimates for each fire station at each of the meetings and ask for residents' opinions and feedback about these plans to improve the way the city's fire stations operate.
"The proposal that we’re working on right now is the culmination of several studies that have been done over the past 10 years," Fleury said. "We’re at this point now where we feel like it’s time to address areas that we just haven’t kept up with from a maintenance perspective."
Public feedback is crucial during this process because these aging fire stations "have become an integral part of the neighborhoods in which they reside," according to Fleury.
"We want to work together with the neighborhoods that they reside in about what their next life looks like," Fleury said. "Just because it doesn’t function as a modern fire station anymore, there still are, I think, many potential uses to support a neighborhood."
Presenting the information and answering questions during the community conversations will be Fleury, Fire Chief Bill Beaty and architect Cody Newman of Driven Design Studio, which is working with the city on this proposed series of projects.
The community conversations are set as follows:
Wednesday, April 17, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. (seeking American Sign Language interpretation)Station 1, 195 E. Michigan Ave.AccessVision will record this conversation for later online and cable broadcast.
Saturday, April 27, 9 to 11 a.m.Station 2, 145 N. Washington Ave.
Wednesday, May 1, 9 to 11 a.m. (seeking Spanish interpretation)Station 3, 222 Cliff St.
Monday, May 6, 6 to 8 p.m. (seeking Spanish and Burmese interpretation)Station 4, 8 S. 20th St.
Saturday, June 1, 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.Station 5, 1170 W. Michigan Ave.
Monday, June 3, 6 to 8 p.m.Station 6, 2401 Capital Ave. SW
More information will be available soon on the city website, battlecreekmi.gov. Questions can be directed to the fire department at (269) 966-3519 or by emailing publicinput@battlecreekmi.gov.
Contact reporter Greyson Steele at gsteele@battlecreekenquirer.com
This article originally appeared on Battle Creek Enquirer: Feedback sought as Battle Creek upgrades, reimagines fire stations
