Ridgewood Fire Station Update: Exterior Site Work About to Begin

If you drive past the under-construction fire station in Ridgewood regularly, it may not appear that much has been improving for a while. That’s because workers have been finishing the interior of the building—and they’re almost done.

Municipal services analyst and interim municipal services director Matthew Supert said Tuesday that the interior tile is done, cabinetry is in place (though not countertops), bunk rooms are completed and an epoxy is being laid for the floor of the apparatus bay.

“Most of the exterior work is done on the building itself,” Supert said. “Almost everything that is happening right now is interior.”

Workers are expecting to complete the interior of the building by the week of April 4, whereupon sitework and landscaping will begin.

“[Sitework] is about six weeks,” Supert said. “They’ll do the parking lot and the widening of Grand Avenue first, and then they’ll do grading, where they add and remove dirt so water runs to the proper location. After that, they’ll do the landscaping, which will be the very last part.”

A bid is currently out for radio equipment for radio communications, and a second one will soon be placed for security cameras. Laying of fiber-optic cable is scheduled to begin in mid-April as well.

Supert said that he hopes the station will celebrate its grand opening in early May, well ahead of initial forecasts that construction would take until autumn.

"Knock on wood, we haven’t run into any major problems,” Supert said. “The biggest concern would be if we run into any major weather.”