Future Fire Station Location And Design Continue

Representatives from Rohrbach Associates PC discuses preliminary fire station designs to the Oskaloosa City Council on Monday.

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The Oskaloosa City Council met in special session on Monday to discuss the future of where the Oskaloosa Fire Department will call home.

Two potential options were presented to the council, by the architects from Rohrbach Associates, for continued discussion on what the future will be.

Two of the initials designs with the most traction at this point were presented. The first was an addition to the current fire station and the second was a new building at new location.

The first discussed was the addition to the current historic building that houses the fire department. This project has a current estimate of 2.6 million dollars.

The addition would include up to 5 additional apparatus bays, on top of the current 3, and would in turn also remodel and re-purpose the current fire house which started its service life in the early 1900’s.

Design features that helped to protect the architectural distinctiveness, while also blending the new structure into the current building, were points discussed with the council. This was also discussed with members of the historic preservation commission earlier in the day.

The other option discussed would be a new location project. This project would be approximately 3.7 million dollars, and would have 7 to 9 apparatus bays, depending upon the finished plan. The cost of the project could be somewhat decreased by utilizing a 7 bay building.

Oskaloosa City Council member Doug Yates asked about other options that could be further explored as well. He asked architects about other options, which included adding an additional 2 or 3 bays on the east side of the existing structure.

“We need to make sure we have all our facts straight,” said Yates on the project.

“Our responsibility is to at least make sure that we evaluate them.” said Yates, of all the different options available. When asked questions by the public about the different options, he said it would be good being able to answer, “We can yes, we looked at that.”

The council came to the consensus that looking at developing the fire station in its current location is something they want studied further. No other action beyond the consensus to continue developing plans was taken.