SECOND UPDATE: This story now includes new clarifying and corrected information marked with asterisks (*).
SNOHOMISH — Pine Avenue is expected to be the street where a future fire station will go.
Where specifically is not ready for prime time. A few sites are being discussed.
A space along Pine, though, is the "most likely location," Fire Chief Don Waller said last week.
Snohomish's future City Hall and a new police station would be on a next door parcel under a long-term vision of developing a public safety civic campus. A one-stop shop for the public.
The ink's almost dry on a major step forward to solidify this plan.
The city and Fire District 4 are forming an agreement that, as part of partnering for a civic campus, will resolve how the two currently share 50-50 ownership of the land under the fire stations at 427* Maple Ave. and 1525 Ave. D. The agreement re-organizes who owns what, and the fire district will be retaining its stations.
The fire board said yes to the agreement March 14. The Snohomish City Council held a discussion but did not vote to approve the agreement at its March 21 meeting.
In the agreement, Fire District 4 will obtain 100% ownership of the Maple Avenue station, and the city would get the back half of the Avenue D fire station plot. The fire station fronting Avenue D is staying.
The land behind the Avenue D station includes where Snohomish’s food bank operates. The food bank won’t be harmed by these changes.
“We intend to honor the lease and have no plans for that property beyond its use as the Snohomish Community Food Bank,” city spokeswoman Shari Ireton said.
The future fire station that would go on Pine Avenue would replace the undersized station on Maple Avenue. The Maple Avenue station would be
repurposed for other fire district needs, Waller said.
The general central area is Snohomish Fire's heaviest for calls, and a bigger station is needed.
The district is committing to placing* a ladder truck inside city limits in trade for gaining full ownership of the Maple Avenue station in the agreement. The ladder truck would be assigned to the future central fire station, Waller said.
The fire district would be designated to handle fire marshal investigations. Building fire code duties would remain with the city.*
The city is agreeing to relocate its Emergency Operations Center from the Avenue D fire station to the new Municipal Campus.
The two have “worked to have something mutually beneficial” where the trades are in-kind, Waller said.
The district would be the lead agency for buying the property site.
The city and fire district's parcels would sit next to each other, but the two agencies would own them independently. "All costs of the land would be fairly divided," the agreement reads.
The agreement language titles the future civic campus as the Pine Avenue property. Size-wise, it would need a bit of acreage.
Completing all the land transfers could take a year or longer, Waller said.
Building the fire station would take a while as well, he said.
Currently, an architectural firm is working for the city and fire district to rough out the basic physical space calculations each would need. No building designs are being drafted yet as the land hasn’t been purchased.
The district plans to pay for the future fire station out-of-pocket. It has about $13 million saved so far.
Waller said Snohomish Fire's plan to not do financing is dependent on voters restoring the fire levy rate to $1.50 per $1,000 in assessed value. That measure will be on ballots this August.
Avoiding financing would save upwards of 20% for the total cost, Waller said, because there is no debt financing: No loan fee, and no interest charge.
The reason it's dependent on the levy restoration is because levy dollars would cover operations, versus eating into savings to cover the same needs.
The district has four fire stations overall. One at Fobes Hill on Foster Slough Road is not in active service. In addition to the two stations in the city, the third station is northeast of town at Three Lakes Road and 171st Avenue SE. Both the Three Lakes and Fobes Hill stations were built in 1990.
Prior to moving the HQ to Avenue D in 1984, the fire station headquarters were downtown at Second Street and Avenue A in the Firehouse Center. A fire engine stayed there to be available for a few years until the point when the Maple Avenue station opened.
Fire District 4, which was initially established outside city limits, took over the Snohomish City Fire Department in the 1990s when there was a citywide vote to hand over fire department operations. By that time, while being separate, the fire district and city fire department already had been working closely in tandem for decades.
In 2003, city voters agreed to be formally annexed into Fire District 4.
* - Corrections - March 23:
The story contained three errors. First, the Maple Avenue Station is at 427 Maple Ave., not 527 Maple Ave. Second, while the fire district would need to place a ladder truck in the city, the story said it would need to purchase a ladder fire truck; the error is that there are other means to place a truck in the city such as leasing it. Third, a late edit made to the story introduced an error that the fire district would become responsible for upholding fire code and building code. This work would remain with the city. The fire district would be responsible for fire marshal investigations after a fire. The marshal investigations would be conducted either through its own staff or by Fire District 4 contracting with an outside agency. The Tribune regrets the errors.
