North Canton officials unveil more details about new fire station

NORTH CANTON − The city's new $10 million fire station will be located on the northwest corner of North Main and Viking streets.

City Administrator Patrick DeOrio revealed the location Monday night. The property includes the site of the former Randy's Automotive business, which moved last fall to 6191 Dressler Road NW in Jackson Township.

The new spot is two blocks north of one of the city's two fire stations.

The North Canton Community Improvement Corporation closed its acquisition of the Randy's site, plus an adjoining residential duplex property at 205 Viking St. NW, in September. Stark County Auditor's office records indicate the properties total up to 1.38 acres.

DeOrio said the cost was about $1.275 million. The funds came from $4 million the city borrowed in May from bond investors for 15 years at an interest rate of 5.35%. He stressed that the city did not acquire the land through eminent domain or threat of eminent domain. At least one parcel was on the market and the sellers agreed to sell the others.

The city's public policy analyst, Benjamin Young, said the site is only four blocks north of the ideal center of the city where the emergency response time would be roughly the same.

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North Canton's new fire station to be done by App Architecture

DeOrio, Young and Councilman David Metheney, Ward 2, recommended hiring App Architecture of Englewood near Dayton to design and oversee construction. The estimated cost over four years would be about $663,000.

Representatives of the firm made their pitch on Jan. 12. DeOrio, Young and Metheney recommended App Architecture over two other finalists. About 18 architect firms applied for the project.

Young said App Architecture has designed fire stations around Ohio, including one in Wadsworth, that he and city officials visited.

"They knew how to put together the right facility to protect our employees," Metheney said. "That's the kind of leadership we need on a big project like this."

Council placed legislation hiring App Architecture on next Monday's agenda.

Timeline of the new fire station in North Canton

DeOrio estimated that it would take a year for App Architecture to design the roughly 23,500-square-foot facility and construction would take about two years. He hopes the city's firefighters and paramedics could move into the new station by 2027. DeOrio anticipates the new station would last at least 50 years.

The administrator has said the city needs a new station because the city's current two locations on North Main Street and Seventh Street NE do not have sufficient living quarters for female firefighters, a violation of federal law. Young has said the stations do not have bays with sufficient width for some modern fire vehicles.

And dividing the fire department's vehicles among two stations is not a sufficient deployment of the vehicles, DeOrio said, adding the new station would allow the city to have two fewer expensive firefighting vehicles than the current six.

He said having a new station is vital to transitioning the fire department to a full-time firefighting force rather than a mostly part-time firefighting force that incurs costly amounts of overtime pay and is insufficient for the city to negotiate formal mutual aid agreements with its neighbors.

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Young said the current fire stations have no decontamination system to clean cancer-causing chemicals off protective clothing and equipment. The new fire station would have such a system. And the new station would keep equipment separate from living quarters to reduce the chance of toxic contamination.

DeOrio said the new fire station is the city's top capital priority. The city plans to eventually borrow the $10 million from bond investors, and the city would repay the amount with capital funds from the city's current 1.5% income tax. That's even if voters were to reject a proposed 0.5% income tax increase on the March 19 ballot.

He said if voters turn down the increase, the city would not have funding to meet its budget gap of $1.5 million for its general fund or paving a significant amount of city roads plus funding for other capital projects such as renovating City Hall to give additional space to the police department, replacing City Hall's heating, air conditioning and ventilation system and upgrading Dogwood Pool.

City officials due to the pandemic nixed the idea of placing firefighters and police officers in one Safety Center because of the risk that an epidemic would infect many emergency responders working at one location. Voters rejected in 2018 funding a safety center with a 10-year, 0.5% income tax increase.

The city administrator said once the firefighters move into the new facility, the city is considering providing its current Main Street station property to IRG, one of the Hoover District developers. It could be part of some kind of land swap where Community Christian Church got property from IRG to expand the church's parking. The city would look to renting out the Seventh Street NE fire station building for events such as graduation parties and weddings.

Reach Robert at robert.wang@cantonrep.com. On X formerly Twitter: @rwangREP.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: North Canton officials unveil more details about new fire station