The new Highland Beach fire station in mid-February. It has a two-bay garage to house a ladder truck and a rescue vehicle. The old station will house a backup rescue vehicle and a backup fire truck. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Rich Pollack
Building a new fire station from scratch is never an easy task and it can be made even more challenging by tight deadlines.
This month, Highland Beach will host an invitation-only ribbon cutting for its state-of-the-art fire station that leaders say is being completed a month ahead of schedule, several thousand dollars under budget and just a few weeks before the town’s new fire rescue department takes over from Delray Beach on May 1.
Actual construction, Chief Glenn Joseph says, took just nine months, a timeline that eclipses the typical construction schedule of between a year and a year and a half.
“It started as a community vision and now it’s a reality,” Joseph said.
Getting the two-story, $8 million-plus station done on time took a coordinated effort, Joseph said, with representatives from the design firm, the construction contractor and several town departments meeting on a weekly basis, sometimes for hours.
“If we had a problem, we didn’t leave the meeting until that problem was solved,” Joseph said.
The station was budgeted to cost $8.6 million, but the actual cost should come in closer to $8.4 million, according to Town Manager Marshall Labadie.
“When we had options, we took the most efficient and effective path forward,” Joseph said, adding that the station has all of the needed, most up-to-date equipment and technology. “There’s nothing missing.”
Added Labadie: “We focused on form and function rather than aesthetics.”
The new firehouse at the south end of the town’s municipal complex has a two-bay garage housing a ladder truck and a rescue vehicle.
A backup rescue vehicle and a backup fire truck will be housed in bays of the town’s current fire station, with the remaining portion of that now-obsolete station possibly used in the future as a community center of sorts. The new station will have eight bunk rooms, a kitchen, day room and gym as well as an Emergency Operations Center equipped with the latest technology. There will also be administrative offices as well as a full conference room on the second floor.
Also included in the new station is a mezzanine over the bays and a public reception area where residents can go for health checks, such as blood pressure screening provided by on-duty paramedics.
While construction of the new station has been a major focus, Joseph and his team have also been working on ensuring the town meets all state and county requirements in developing policy and procedure manuals for the new department.
As of mid-March, all of the fire rescue department’s 28 positions — captains, drivers and paramedics — were filled and training had begun.
Most of the members of the department, which will operate with four shifts and seven on a shift, are from the area, including a captain who recently retired from Delray Beach Fire-Rescue, Joseph said.
Highland Beach commissioners voted in April 2021 to sever the contract with Delray Beach, believing they could provide improved service at less than the estimated $5 million a year Highland Beach pays to the city.
Labadie said that the town expects to save several hundred thousand dollars each year by creating its own department.
The town manager said that while the ceremonial April 19 ribbon cutting is limited to invitation because of space considerations, a public open house will be planned for the fall.
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