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About 40 residents took their last official opportunity to meet with the architect of Peterborough’s proposed new fire rescue station at the Peterborough Town Library on Wednesday night.
The proposed station, which will be put up for a vote at the Peterborough Town Meeting on May 15, will be located near the Peterborough Community Center at the corner of Elm Street and Route 101. In May 2022, Peterborough voters approved $2 million to begin the design and engineering phases of the project. On August 19 of that year, the Budget Committee and Capital Improvement Committee met to assess the town’s ability to guarantee and set a budget cap for the project. The Peterborough Select Board set a budget cap of $12.1 million, which represents 70% of the town’s bond capacity.
At Wednesday night’s meeting, Jason LaCombe of SMP Architecture showed a video of the project’s “skyway” design, detailing how the campus design has evolved over the past year based on community feedback and the need to adhere to the project’s budget cap.
“Throughout the entire process, we needed to make concessions to get things affordable for the town,” Lacombe said.
Changes to SMP’s original plan include restoring the curved driveway to the front of the community center and building a sidewalk leading to Shaw’s and the CVS shopping plaza.
“People want to be able to access shopping areas without having to cross the tarmac,” Lacombe said.
Peterborough Town Assistant Administrator Seth MacLean, Fire Chief Ed Walker, Hoyle Tanner Civil Engineer Marisa DiBiaso, Harvey Construction’s Keith Kelley and Peterborough Town Administrator Nicole MacStay also spoke about the project.
In response to a question about the size of the new fire station, Walker cited the poor conditions and deficiencies of the existing fire station, which has been located in the former DPW garage building since 1972.
“Currently, we can’t park all of our equipment inside the building. We have to park some of our equipment outside, which is very detrimental to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment,” Walker said. “In our current space, we can’t access everything. We have to move some equipment to reach others, which is not ideal in an emergency. If we want to get back to the ship, we have to move the ambulance. Since We have some equipment blocked for space reasons. The new building will provide parking for all 14 pieces of emergency equipment.”
Walker said the fire station will hold open houses during Peterborough’s First Friday events on April 5 and May 3 and encourages all members of the public to come visit the old fire station.
Once the fire department moves to the new campus, the town will likely sell the old building and land in order to “get the property back on the tax rolls,” McStay said.
“We know there may be ground contamination issues that have to be addressed, but in the future, this could be a good site for mixed-use development,” McStay said.
Resident Heather Peterson noticed the program brochure mentioned fundraising and asked if the town was doing any fundraising or grants to help pay for the program.
“We are pursuing all financing options. We have talked to the firefighters association and that may be possible. There are some components of the program that may make sense for fundraising,” McLean said.
McStay emphasized that the town will not rely on fundraising to fund the project because it is a critical emergency building, but said the town will seek every possible reimbursement grant during the construction of the campus, such as from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Grants.
Resident Laura Campbell asked whether the location of the new campus would impact response times during emergencies, and Walker responded that the issue had been studied and the new location would not negatively impact response times.
Fire Department Building Committee member Carl Mabbs-Zeno asked MacStay to talk about the benefits of the new building’s core storage area.
“Right now, our data core, which is all the servers in town, is in the basement of the town house, which is a fieldstone foundation, and it’s leaking,” McStay said. “We need a better place to store our data core and permanent records, and the fire station is the only new building we plan to build over the next 20 or 30 years. Building this core storage space is critical for all of our town’s emergency services. ”
MacLean said that while Wednesday night’s meeting was the last formal event to solicit feedback from residents before the May 15 town meeting, the Fire Department Building Committee will continue to gather feedback and encouraged all Peterborough residents to ask any questions and concerns about the project. doubt.
For information about the project, visit peterborough-nh.civilspace.io/en/projects/peterborough-fire-ambulance-station-building-project.
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