03-25-2024 Council Meeting Packet

Home Search

Lino Lakes, Minnesota – Fire Department Analysis Page 24 V. Evaluate Adding One Facility with a Preliminary Location on Birch Street Adding a new station in southern Lino Lakes will be essential to get response times into compliance with NFPA standards, regardless of which service delivery model the City chooses. This is a growing area of the city, and call volumes to this area will only increase as development continues. Plans should move forward as soon as practical to locate, design, build and fund this station. Establishing a new station in southern Lino Lakes will involve site identification and possibly acquisition, architectural planning, construction, and ongoing maintenance. A double deep, three-bay satellite station can vary in size from 6,500 square feet to 7,100 square feet, depending on the size and nature of vehicles and amenities to be included at the facility, such as storage, showers, locker rooms, and office or meeting space. Costs for fire stations of this size in Minnesota average approximately $195.00 per square foot for construction, with another 25% required for administrative costs (A/E fees, legal, bidding), or $243.75 per square foot. Budgeting for a new facility may range from approximately $1,500,000 to $1,750,000. This does not include land acquisition or site readiness. Costs referenced above are from national building construction reference sources including RS Means, Engineering News Record, and local Minnesota design experts. The design of a fire station often takes into consideration other variables such as public meeting space, city administration needs and other non-fire related facility factors. These considerations would need to be explored in the planning and design phase of the process. Recommended Lino Lakes Birch Street Station The Lino Lakes Comprehensive Plan calls for a continuing build out of southern Lino Lakes. This portion of the city already has sub-par emergency service coverage for its current population density. This issue will be exacerbated as population density in this area increases. The demand analysis also showed that southern Lino Lakes is considered an EMS hotspot. As a result of Lino Lakes’ desire to provide better coverage for its southern areas, the city has considered building a new fire station on Birch Street. Figure 10 shows how an additional fire station centrally located near the curve on Birch Street would impact fire coverage in those scenarios where Lino Lakes operates just those stations within its city limits. From the map, it becomes apparent that this additional fire station would close the coverage gap in southern Lino Lakes, and provide a more appropriate level of fire and EMS service to citizens in this area. Figure 11 shows how an additional Birch Street fire station would add to the coverage provided by the current CFD stations. The additional station serves to close the coverage gap in southern Lino Lakes that was illustrated earlier in Figure 7 and Figure 8. Regardless of whether Lino Lakes decides to continue working with its CFD partners, this new fire station will be necessary if the city is to improve the level of service to residents in the southern area of the city. 30