Two hours after the open forum for the city's fourth fire station began, chief Steve Sims was still up on his feet discussing logistics.
"It was busy, but so worth it," Sims said. "For people to come out on a cold, cold night with a lot of good questions -- I just want to say thanks to them for showing up."
About 40 people, including Mayor Peter Christie and several aldermen, packed the Fire Department Training Room inside Station No. 1 at Town Center Jan. 7 to see renderings for the fourth station and hear Sims address their concerns.
The new Highlands Gate station will be southwest of the intersection of Forest Hills Boulevard and Buckstone Drive. Plans show the station will be approximately 9,000 square feet with space allotted for six bedrooms and three bathrooms. Between nine and 12 fire fighters will work there, covering the west-central portion of Bella Vista.
Sims said he mainly answered questions about siren noise, lights and how many calls the station will handle.
"Those were the big things, that if someone was in their bed at 3 a.m., would they be woken up by lights and sirens blazing out of the station," he said. "But I let them know that a lot of times, at that time of night when there's no traffic, we don't run sirens and lights on calls."
Development of the new station is under way. Last spring, the city purchased 4.31-acre parcel from Village Bible Free Evangelical Church for approximately $172,000 for the station.
In November 2014, the City Council approved a contract with engineering firm Wittenberg, Delony and Davidson Inc. to handle development and bidding services for the new station. The firm, based in Little Rock with offices in Fayetteville, has already supplied preliminary site and building designs, along with topographic and boundary surveys.
The plans, which are not finalized, depict a fire station with a stone facade similar to Station No. 1. Sims said the goal was to keep the exteriors relatively the same so residents would know they're city buildings.
However, Linda Lloyd suggested that cisterns be added to the station to collect rainwater. Lloyd is the owner of Acorn Realty and serves on the Bella Vista Board of Zoning Appeals.
"I'm a member of American Rainwater Catchment Systems Association, and I used cisterns for a house I built in Amarillo, Texas," Lloyd said. "My entire water supply was from a cistern."
State health department regulations restrict non-residential facilities from serving potable water from cisterns, but Sims said the station may use it for landscaping needs and supplying water to the wash bay.
"For 1,000-square-foot roofs, one inch of rain is about 660 gallons of water," Lloyd said, citing data from ARCSA's website (www.arcsa.org). "The fire station roof is almost 10,000 sq. ft., and Bella Vista gets an average rain fall of 47 inches a year. So you crank those numbers into your calculator and you start getting some crazy figures real quick."
The cost of the entire project is expected to be approximately $2.4 million.
City officials said in the fall they expect to pull some money from the reserves fund to pay for the station.
The city has around $7.5 million in its reserve fund. Construction will begin this summer with a tentative open date for June 2016.
Sims has spoken at length about the need of a fourth fire station. Numbers released by the BVFD show that 2014 was the busiest year on record, with personnel responding to more than 3,000 calls. A majority of those calls came from Station No. 1, the one at Town Center. Sims says a station in the Highlands could diffuse some of the work load.
A fourth station at Highlands Gate would cut Station No. 1's responses by nearly one third, Sims said.
As of right now, Station No. 1 handles 60 percent of all calls. The Highlands Gate station would cut into that amount significantly, taking about 22 percent of the calls.
General News on 01/14/2015