Crime & Safety

Eagan Council Purchases Site for Proposed Fire Station

The Eagan City Council voted to purchase a 4.3-acre site for $625,000, with plans to potentially build a new, consolidated fire station on the site.

Eagan city officials are laying the groundwork for the construction of a new, consolidated fire station, but say development of the station may still be years down the road, if it occurs at all.

On Tuesday night, the Eagan City Council voted to purchase 4.3 acres of land near the intersection of Blackhawk and Diffley Roads from Eagan Pointe Senior Living LLC. for $625,000. The 4.3-acre site is currently part of a larger, 11-acre parcel owned by Eagan Pointe Senior Living, LLC., which plans to build a four-story, 148-unit senior living facility on the remainder of the site.

The city plans to use its portion of the land for the future construction of a new fire station that would consolidate several existing fire facilities into one location. Details on the proposed fire station are few at this point, although the council on Tuesday also voted to hire an architectural firm CNH Architects to develop a conceptual footprint for the fire station.

The cost for the conceptual renderings is $25,800, according to documents released by the city.

The city chose to move on the land purchase because it saw a strategic opportunity, according to a news release issued by Eagan Communications Director Tom Garrison. If the parcel is not needed, the land could be resold.

It's too early to know which, if any, of the city's existing fire stations would be shuttered as part of a possible consolidation, Eagan Fire Chief Mike Scott said.

The department is considering building a new station, Scott added, as part of a larger, proposed restructuring from a paid on-call firefighting model to a duty crew system. Under a paid on-call model, the department's entire firefighting staff is on-call at any given time and must respond if possible when any call comes through.

With a duty crew model, however, several volunteer firefighters work dedicated shifts and respond to many of the more minor calls the department receives. The rest of the fire department staff is not paged for a call unless a larger structure fire or significant incident occurs.

The paid on-call model, Scott said, allows for faster response times and more predictable scheduling for fire department staff but also reduces the need for as many fire stations.

"We could easily get by with three stations in the community [under a duty crew model], but they have to be strategically placed, and they have to be large enough to house specialty vehicles," Scott said.



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