Floor Plans Emerge for New Roseville Fire Station

At Monday night's Roseville City Council meeting, CNH Architects presented floor and site plans and conceptual drawings of the new $8 million fire station to be built on city-owned land just north of city hall.

The existing station, which has been plagued by mold, is scheduled to be demolished on Dec. 5.

Plans for the new building feature an exam space for members of the public, conference rooms, apparatus bays to house fire trucks, and training facilities.

In addition, architectural features designed for firefighter training will be integrated throughout the building. A metal beam on the ceiling will allow trainees to rappel down the stairway. An open floor plan will let firefighters climb between floors using ladders.

And firefighters will train outdoors from the building’s exterior towers (“They seem to be stairways that don’t go anywhere,” Mayor Dan Roe said), providing the public a chance to see the station in action.

“We’re taking maximum advantage of our storage space,”  Roseville Fire Chief  Tim O’Neill said.

After a lengthy debate, the council decided not to pursue third-party accreditation for sustainable architecture.

The council had considered the LEED certification, a nationally established standard that would have cost around $100,000, and the Green Globe certification, a Canadian standard that would have cost about $50,000.

Council member Tammy McGehee was adamant in her support of paying for third-party accreditation.

“We’ve had three quality stations rot,” she said. “This is an $8 million, 50-year project we’re asking the citizens to pay for. I think that to not have the external certification is not to do right by our project.”

Other council members said that declining to seek third-party certification did not mean the city was declining to build sustainably and the $50,000 to $100,000 cost of certification was not worth its benefits.