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County proposes combined fire-police facility in Herndon
Fairfax County has proposed constructing a new fire station in the Herndon Police Station building on Herndon Parkway.Preliminary plans for a one-story, 14,500-square-foot station with drive-through bays and separate women's facilities were presented to the Herndon Town Council at its March 4 work session.
Assistant Fire Chief Daryl Louder told the council that Station No. 4, 680 Spring St. in downtown Herndon, is the oldest firehouse in Fairfax County and, as such, is no longer meeting the needs of its crew or of its ever-expanding coverage area.
The two-story station, built in 1950, cannot accommodate newer, larger-sized vehicles such as ladder trucks and is also lacking in facilities for women.
The current Spring Street station will also not accommodate heavy rescue equipment and creates the potential for accidents because trucks must back into the station on the narrow, two-lane Spring Street.
At the work session, Louder, along with Teresa Lepe, a project manager with the county's planning and design division, displayed a diagram outlining the proposed Herndon Parkway station.
The station is designed to create a town public safety center consisting of police and fire facilities in one location.
“That option has been discussed in previous years, and it has been built into the strategic plan of the police department as an overall town public safety center," Town Manager Art Anselene told The Times in October when county officials were first considering the idea.
At that time, the Town Council had recently voted against an original proposal that would have put the fire station on a four-acre tract of land, including a section of Herndon's Stanton Park. Town staff instead suggested using an already existing bus garage on Spring Street for the new firehouse.
“We looked into that suggestion but after talking to the director of the Department of Transportation it was determined that the site was too small,” Lepe said Friday.
Since that determination, the county has been designing a conceptual layout of the proposed Herndon Parkway station and talking with town staff about it, Lepe said.
Louder has said previously that the land purchase for the originally proposed Stanton Park site would have been funded by a $900,000 public safety bond issued in 2006.
Beyond that, any construction or additional land acquisition funds would need to be requested in an upcoming November 2008 public facilities bond.
Louder said Monday that the Herndon Parkway site would have to be approved by both the Herndon Town Council and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors before April 30 in order to request any funding from the November bond issue.
Louder previously estimated the ground-up construction costs of the proposed Stanton Park site to be between $10 million and $12 million.
Although some demolition and construction is proposed for the Herndon Parkway site, the cost should be considerably less due to the fact that these would only be modifications to an already existing building.
Financial negotiations with the town for the use of its building have not yet begun. The town has been leasing out the portions of the one-story office building that were not converted to the police station.
“We have been talking with town staff but they need concurrence from the Town Council before they can enter into any negotiations or discussions,” Lepe said Friday.
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