Image Courtesy of Five Bugles Design
| By Neil Johnson, Reporter/Anchor, Big Radio |
Milton and Edgerton’s newly combined Lakeside Fire Department is finding common ground for a new, central fire station.
It would be built in a fast-growing community that’s wedged right between Milton and Edgerton: Newville.
On Tuesday, officials from Milton, Edgerton and nine towns in northern Rock County got a first look at a hired consultant’s new designs for not one—but three new fire stations that Lakeside Fire-Rescue seeks to build over the next three years.
The hope, Lakeside Fire Chief Randy Pickering says, is that the department can position its 80 emergency responders in the heart of the areas in the district’s 220 square miles that are predicted to see the most new growth over the next 50 years.
“You’re building a building that is going to serve this area for 50 to 75 years. Let’s get them in the right spot, not only where our (emergency response) volume is today, but where we expect the volume to grow.”
Under preliminary plans unveiled Tuesday, Lakeside hopes first to build a new central fire station off the busy Highway 59 corridor in Newville.
The station would sit on a wooded, former orchard on the north side of Mallwood Drive and East Richardson Springs Road. Newville, the gateway to the Lake Koshkonong recreation area, has seen significant population growth over the last half-decade, along with millions of dollars in new residential and commercial development.
“It’s a big blob of residential explosion there,” Pickering says. ”
“It’s the classic example…when the residential starts to grow, then you start to see the commercial come along with it. Those are the type of things we’re looking at so that we get this right – before we actually start spending taxpayer money.”
Plans at Newville are part of a larger package Lakeside envisions that first would include a second new fire station built near the city-owned industrial park on Milton’s far east side.
That’s where an industrial boom has brought more than 500,000 square feet of new manufacturing space in the last few years. Those two projects don’t yet have cost estimates, but they’d come alongside a third, later buildout of a new station near what’s considered a residential growth edge on Milton’s far west end.
After building the three new stations, Pickering says, Lakeside would then remodel its existing Edgerton fire station.
Pickering says the fire district should have estimates on the three new stations by the end of the fall, and bids for the project could go out over the winter months.
The aim, Pickering says, is to get all three stations built by the same contractor. That, he says, could help keep the construction price tag down at a time when the cost to build government buildings has doubled compared to just a few years ago.
It’s not clear whether the district would seek a referendum to build the new stations. But the two new Milton stations eventually would outmode the current Milton fire station that’s off Highway 59 in Merchant’s Row on Milton’s west side.
Five Bugles, the fire station design firm hired by the district to design the new stations, showed plans for a central fire station that would bring a 2,200-square-foot training classroom.
That’s something Pickering said Lakeside Fire and Rescue needs as it continues to recruit and train new ambulance drivers, medics and firefighters to build a fire district he says will better serve the fire district’s 25,000 people.
“We’re trying to home-grow the future of our department,” he said.
The Newville station along with the two other proposed stations would help the department to spread around its staff and equipment so the department could respond to any emergency call in the district within five minutes, according to an operational analysis.
Costs for the Milton fire stations would be divvied between the towns that would be most directly served by them.
But because the Newville station would serve as Lakeside’s central fire station, including the headquarters for training and the district’s administration, as well as a small, administrative outpost for the Wisconsin State Patrol, Pickering says it would be paid for by all 11 municipal and towns covered by the district.
One unusual aspect of the Newville project: the state department of Transportation intends to build a new roundabout at East Richardson Springs Road and Highway 59—the fourth traffic circle to be built along the bustling nexus of Highway 59 and Interstate 90/39.
The roundabout would come in 2028, according to plans unveiled Tuesday by design firm Five Bugles.
Pickering said there’s no concrete timeline for the new stations, but he believes the central station in Newville would be built and in use before the state puts in the new roundabout.
