Courtesy Saratoga Springs Planning (2021)
Rendering of Fire Station #3.
The price tag for Fire Station #3, also known as the East Side EMS station, planned for Henning Road in Saratoga Springs may grow to $7 million, up from $6.7 million after a storage building has been added to the plan.
The unheated storage facility will hold traffic signage and other apparatus including riot gear that does not need to be kept warm.
Commissioner of Public Safety Robin Dalton said the storage space on the property had been added to the plan recently, but “I was curious about that too,” she said in reference to the price: $300,000 for an 800 square foot, unheated building.
The first she had heard that number, she said, was during the presentation by representatives of CHA and Heuber-Breuer Construction Company at the city council meeting Tuesday evening, Dec. 7. The two companies are guiding the project through initial planning, which includes creating construction documents and spec sheets.
[Read our earlier coverage here, and here.]
Dalton said in the subsequent interview that the police are “totally out of storage space in City Hall," so the building is needed, adding that she would be looking at the price.
Earlier this year, the plans for the building had gone before the city’s Planning Board and the Design Review Committee for an advisory opinion to the city council.
Since the station is owned by and being developed by the city, it does not go before the various planning boards for review in the same way that a private development would, Susan Barden, the city’s senior planner said. The drawings and plans that the boards reviewed do not include the storage facility.
Both boards offered a favorable opinion of the project.
At the meeting Dec. 7, the City Council offered a “negative” environmental review of the plans, meaning that the station will have no serious environmental impact as planned.
The building will sit on property leased long-term from the New York Racing Authority near the Oklahoma Track. The location was part of a lawsuit filed to get the station moved.
The project should go to bid in February. Construction should begin March 2022, the representatives said.