City Officials Break Ground on Smyrna's Newest Fire Station

Three years in the making, city officials finally broke ground on Smyrna’s Fire Station No. 5 Wednesday afternoon. Melleny Pritchett, mayor pro tem and Ward 1 city council member, officiated the groundbreaking ceremony in the absence of Mayor Max Bacon. The $1.4 million project is being funded by a federal stimulus grant and a $354,433 contribution from the city.

For Deputy Fire Chief Roy Acree, the beginning of construction actually signals the end of a process he and other city officials began three years ago. That’s when the Smyrna Fire Department applied for a federal stimulus grant to build the structure and a FEMA Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant to staff the station for its first three years of operation.

“It’s been a long process up to this point,” Acree said. “In a lot of ways the actual construction of the project is the easy thing. We’ve done it before. Footprint-wise this is the same building that we built 2005, which is now Smyrna Fire Station No. 3. The difference with this building will be the requirements for the LEED certification.”

Acree said that some of the 1,700-square-foot-structure’s LEED features include the installation of solar panels to heat a percentage of the station’s water and an underground cistern to collect runoff water from the side of the building that can then be used to wash the fire engine. Once completed the station will house Fire Engine No. 5 and Fire Medic No. 5, an emergency medical services response vehicle.

Smyrna city council awarded Catamount Constructors Inc. a construction manager at-risk contract for the fire station in December. The terms of the contract stipulate that the project be completed in 160 days, weather permitting. Acree said the station is on schedule to be completed by late July or early August, just in time to meet the terms of the federal stimulus grant.

“We actually applied for the grant in spring of 2009,” he said. “We were made aware of the grant award in September 2009 and we have a three-year-window to have the project complete. So we have till September of this year to be down. So there’s a couple month buffer.”

Located at 750 Cooper Lake Road, the new fire station will serve southwest Smyrna, an area that is sometimes underserved due to its distance from Fire Station No. 4 on South Cobb Drive.

“In this area behind me, down this road, there are people who live there who have to wait eight, nine minutes,” said Smyrna Fire Chief Jason Lanyon. “And on the far-end there are situations where it’s taken us 14 minutes to get there. That just does not live up to the standard of public safety that the leaders of the city of Smyrna have set. This will go toward fixing that.”

Ron Fennel, Ward 7 city council member, lives in Vinings Estates, one of the neighborhoods that will be served by the fire station.

“This will be the visible public presence, apart from the park on Oakdale Road, in Ward 7 that has the name ‘Smyrna’ on the side of the building,” he said. “We’re proud of that. We want everybody to know. This part of Smyrna is Smyrna just like downtown, Market Village, everywhere else. We are Smyrna in the south part of the ward and we’re proud of that.”

Other city council members in attendance were Andrea Blustein, Ward 2; Corkey Welch, Ward 4; Susan Wilkinson, Ward 5; and Wade Lnenicka, Ward 6. Former Ward 7 Council Member Pete Wood was also in attendance. He called the ceremony a “red-letter day” for the ward he still calls home.