Town of Fremont residents approve building new fire hall/ community center

On Aug. 22, 142 residents in the town of Fremont voted to decide whether or not to construct a new fire hall/community center on the outskirts of Chili. In a 129-13 vote, the residents voted overwhelmingly in support of the new building, which will cost $1,571,896 to build.

Of the $1,571,896 amount, the town of Fremont will only have to pay $421,896 after receiving funding from several different sources to help cover the project costs. One million dollars will be covered by a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG)-Public Facilities grant that was awarded to the Chili-Fremont Fire Department earlier this year. An additional $150,000 is being covered through private donations toward the project, leaving residents with a smaller project cost to cover.

“We got a 5.5-percent interest rate on a 20-year loan to build the building,” said Lt. Erin Martin of the Chili-Fremont Fire Department. “That will mean the town will have an annual payment of $50,442.17 if we don’t take into account the private donations. With that, the payment will be lower.”

A timeline for the project has yet to be decided. Before the vote, Martin gave a short presentation on the details of the project and what the floor plans of the building looked like. The site for the new fire hall will be north of Chili on approximately 5 acres of land. The land is being sold to the township at a discounted price of $500 per acre and an environmental impact survey was conducted on the site for $8,000 to get the land approved for its future use.

“We have had a lot of questions on why this site,” said Martin. “The current site is not big enough for a new fire hall. With the amount of vehicles we have, we need a minimum of 3,800 square feet. We have 1,824 square feet right now. We have been asked, ‘Why not the old feed mill?’ There would be demolition costs we would have to add to the project. There have also been suggestions of the Fremont School. The school is currently a housing unit. If we were to tear that down, there would be extra demolition costs, but the town would also be responsible for relocating all the people that live there.”

The new fire hall will be 72 feet by 82 feet. There will be four bay doors for the fire department’s trucks, two of which will be drive-thru stalls. The drive-thru stalls, Martin said, will not only ensure that the trucks they need will not be parked in, but will also allow trucks that need to be refilled with water during an emergency response in the winter to get filled up without having to work against the elements.

“We will have a dry hydrant in the building so we can fill up our trucks out of the cold,” she said. “When it’s winter and you’re dealing with cold and working with water, there’s always problems. This takes the trucks out of the weather where they can get warmed up and filled up.”

In addition to the truck bay area, the new hall will have a section that can be used as a community center, training area, or as a base location in the event of

CHEYENNE THOMAS/STAFF PHOTO

Firefighter Erin Martin speaks to a packed house on the proposed floor plan for the new Town of Fremont fire hall.

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a community-wide emergency such as a tornado. The space is expected to have an 80-90-person capacity. There will also be a kitchen, storage for fire/EMS equipment, and showers and gear extractors to make sure firefighters and their gear are able to get cleaned up on site after handling an emergency.

“The community center will be open to the public,” said Martin. “The fire department has to have a base station where they can come together in case of having to run an emergency operation, like when we had that tornado 10 years ago. We don’t have anything like that right now.”

Because of the nature of the CDBG grant, Martin said that after the new fire hall is completed, the building cannot be called a town hall for the next five years. Official meetings of the town board can still occur at the site, she said, but it cannot be officially called a town hall until after that timeframe has passed.