Town Would Borrow Money Through a Bond Issue/
By Wiley Wood

Plans for a new firehouse were presented to the Board of Finance on August 13. The design, which incorporates and expands the existing building on Shepard Rd., was described by architect Michael Fortuna as “pretty bare bones.” Total costs are budgeted at $2.7 million.

If the board of finance decides to endorse the firehouse proposal, it will consider the best way to structure a bond issue to raise money for construction. No borrowing will occur until town residents have voted on the question at a town meeting.

The present fire station was built in 1970. An extra equipment bay was added 20 years later. The 3,800 square-foot building barely houses the Norfolk Volunteer Fire Department’s fleet of pumpers and its tanker and utility vehicles. Training sessions are often held in the apparatus bays with the fire trucks parked outside and PowerPoint slides projected on the walls. “We can make do with what we have,” says Ron Zanobi, a fireman who serves on the committee to choose a new design. “We have been making do for some time now.”

The new building would keep the existing structure while adding apparatus bays, mechanical and storage rooms, and a dedicated meeting room. The footprint would increase by 6,000 square feet and include the site of the old ambulance building, which would be demolished. Its different sections would be gathered under three simple gables linked by flat or gently sloped roofs. “From above, it will look like a little village,” says Fortuna.

Among the features of the proposed building are a new generator to supplement the existing one, a sprinkler system, an upgrade of the existing structure to current seismic codes, a ventilation system for vehicle exhaust, and a radio room. “Most firehouses have some kind of ventilation system, because that first burst from a diesel engine’s tailpipe can be pretty bad,” says Zanobi. A hose will attach to the vehicles’ tailpipes during start-up and vent the exhaust directly outside. The radio room is important to many firemen, says Jon Barbagallo, the fire department’s information officer: “We actually had to move the radio out of the present radio room. It was so loud when the engines started that you couldn’t hear transmissions, and we had to put it in the kitchen.”

The present proposal would heat the building with a geothermal system, using the neighboring City Meadow lot to sink five 400-foot wells for the heat pump. While the cost of geothermal heating is $30,000 to $50,000 more than for conventional heating, the architect’s analysis forecasts a payback period of about ten years.

The presentation to the board of finance was the culmination of a three-year process. A town-appointed committee, whose members include an architect and several builders from the community and two representatives of the Norfolk fire department, chose Fortuna to design the firehouse. Deliberations began in 2010 after the completion of the Norfolk ambulance building. The needs of the fire department were reviewed and a number of architectural firms were invited to submit designs. Fortuna’s firm, TLB Architecture, from Chester, CT was chosen.

Earlier designs included features that were high on the fire department’s list, such as drive-through apparatus bays and dedicated fitness and ready rooms. When these designs came in at over $4 million, the board of finance set a guideline of $2 million as the total cost of the facility. The present design, whose construction costs run to $2.3 million and whose total projected cost of $2.7 million includes permitting and a 10% contingency fund, is the upshot.

Mark Burke, who chairs the Norfolk Emergency Services Building Committee, has expressed the hope that a town meeting will be held in autumn 2013 so that drawings can be sent out for bids over the winter and construction can start in spring 2014. The present firehouse would continue in use during the 9-month construction period.

“That schedule would be ideal,” says First Selectman Sue Dyer, “but I can’t say whether it will happen.”