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Fire stations of the world: North West Fire Station in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, USA
The North West Fire Station in Fitchburg is both fire and EMS station and was built in 2017. Situated in northern Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States, the new fire station for the City of Fitchburg replaces an existing, aging fire station and provides a better location for fire operations. The third-largest city in the county, it has a population of 40 318. The North West Fire Station hosts a single-level, 25 000-square-foot station and features four drive-through apparatus bays, an emergency operations centre, decontamination facilities, turnout gear rooms, exercise facility, nine bunk rooms, storage space, a state-of-the-art kitchen and numerous training amenities. The bi-fold doors, featured on the front of the station, provide a high-speed/low-maintenance door for the department’s frontline apparatus. The windows around the building have a low-E glazing, which reduce solar heat gain. The transparent metallic coating from these low-E glazing windows works in two ways to economise heating energy; the dual action coating reflects heat back into the room, while allowing heat and light from the sun to pass into the building. The design also incorporated a geothermal system, radiant in-floor heating, rooftop photovoltaic panels, LED lighting and a solar hot water heating system; all of which are set to save the City $46 265 per year in energy costs. Beyond supporting each city’s budget, these features benefit community residents and the environment as a whole. The North West Fire Station is phase 1 of a two-phase project to construct two new fire stations in the City of Fitchburg. The growth of the City as well as the desire to remain up-to-date served as the catalyst to move forward with the project.
Due to a tight 1,6-acre site and the desire to accommodate a 25 000-square-foot building on a single level, the design was laid out in a sawtooth fashion. The sawtooth design maximised the site area for on-site storm water retention and vehicular ingress and egress and was necessary to keep the building within the setback lines along two major commercial streets in a busy commercial district. Overall, the project was estimated at $5,5 million and built for $5,1 million and was completed two months ahead of schedule. Source: Short Elliott Hendrickson Inc |
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