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Salt Lake City fire officials on Tuesday joined elected city leaders and agency directors, architects and construction officials for the groundbreaking of the fire department's new Station 14, which will be the second net-zero energy fire station in the country.
The groundbreaking — at the new Station 14 site, at the corner of 3800 West and California Avenue (1285 South) — was preceded by remarks from Fire Chief Brian Dale, Mayor Jackie Biskupski, Councilmember Andrew Johnston, and Vicki Bennett, director of the Office of Sustainability, according to a fire department news release.
The two-story building will be 17,100 square feet including a four-bay, 5,770 square-foot garage for housing fire and emergency apparatus
There will be 10 single-bunk rooms and two officer suites, along with space programmed for fire operations that include a station office, kitchen, maintenance and training spaces.
It will be designated as one of the city's branch stations to coordinate city-wide disaster relief.
This station will replace the current Station 14, located at 1560 Industrial Road (1900 West), which is the oldest fire station in Salt Lake City.
Built in 1968, the single-company station can no longer adequately house and support the most current firefighting equipment. This station will be re-purposed as the Fire Training Center, as it is located adjacent to the city's fire training tower.
Emergency crews working from the new location will still meet the four-minute response goal to any location in the district, the news release said.
The station will be built as a net-zero energy building, meaning the total amount of energy used by the building on an annual basis is roughly equal to the amount of renewable energy created on the site.
To that end, the building will feature triple-pane glazing and a high-performance envelope, along with onsite-energy generation. The rooftop of the building will include a photovoltaic array of more than 300 panels totaling 110 kW. A geothermal source will also provide heating and cooling energy to the mechanical system, the news release said..
Construction of the new fire station was identified as a capital improvement project in the 2012 impact fees facilities plan. The city council allocated approximately $2.5 million in funding for the design in the 2014-15 budget, the news release said..
Zwick Construction Company was awarded the construction contract for the station. Construction is expected to take approximately one year and the station should be operational by the fall of 2017. The new facility was designed by Blalock and Partners.