Fernie City Council has made its decision on where to place the future fire hall.
City officials said the building will be located at 1500 5th Avenue, using a portion of Prentice Park.
The project comes after Fernie’s fire department moved out of the old building and into the city’s previous public works yard.
“In 2022, the old Fire Hall at 692 3rd Ave was decommissioned due to significant issues with the facility structure and function and the inability of the site and structure to meet current requirements for a fire hall,” said city officials.
Fernie officials said the planning phase looked at multiple sites, including all city-owned land and co-users and co-uses.
This eventually led to the decision being between two parcels of city-owned land: 902 2nd Avenue and 1500 5th Avenue.
“Test fits were conducted for both finalist sites and the results put through a site evaluation matrix that considered the evaluating criteria determined through the stakeholder engagement and regulatory requirements for a fire hall,” said city staff. “1500 5th Avenue is the recommended site for the replacement Fire Hall for both its technical advantages and the flexibility of the site to accommodate co-uses and future growth.”
Staff noted that the site comes with several benefits.
“It meets standard NFPA and FUS response requirements, has a larger site area and less setback constraints, a shorter distance to Hwy 3 than Site 1, and no known site contamination issues,” said city staff.
“The biggest advantage to the Prentice Park site is the flexibility that the larger site provides for site layout, future expansion beyond the anticipated 15% growth rate, and the independent development of a co-use that doesn’t affect the aggressive project timeline.”
The new facility is planned to serve the community for 50 or more years.
The project will now move into the next steps.
“The next phases of the project will include further community engagement, continued exploration of co-use partnerships, concept design and project costing,” said city officials.
City staff hopes the new fire hall will be operational by 2026.
