Daniel Drainville
The Day, New London, Conn.
(TNS)
Waterford — Two days after signing a deed that gave ownership of his company’s fire station and land to the town, Oswegatchie Fire Company No. 4 Chief Chris Pafias stood last Friday in the 94-year-old building’s common room, where a broken boiler means the heat never shuts off.
Overhead fans whirred, circulating the hot air.
The fans are one of several “Band-Aid” fixes made to the dilapidated fire station, located at 441 and 439 Boston Post Road, over the last four years. Others problems in the building include no heat in the bunkroom and widespread mold due to water leaking through the roof. The problem roof, built in the 1980s, has been shored up through the years with wooden support beams and tarps.
“This building has, maybe, even with the Band-Aids, a couple of years left,” Pafias said. “If this project doesn’t happen, this place will close.”
On Jan. 29, Pafias and Chandler Caulkins, the chairman of the fire company’s board of directors, signed a deed transferring the fire station, and the two parcels of land it sits on, to the town for $1. The transfer paves the way for a plan that calls for constructing the first town-owned fire station on the site of the current parking lot for the building. The plan will allow the current fire station to be used during construction.
First Selectman Rob Brule confirmed afterwards that the town had also signed the deed, but did not respond to a request to say when he signed it, or to provide a copy of the deed. The RTM had authorized the purchase last year, but the town had to wait while environmental studies were done on the site.
The agreement marks the first instance of one of the town’s five volunteer companies giving the town control of its land and building. All four other departments are privately owned.
While Pafias and other members of the fire department have said they were not always in favor of forfeiting the building and land, which are valued at about $1.37 million, to the town essentially for free, what they are getting in return is a new building without having to pay for it.
Pafias and Gilpin said the land transfer was necessary for the town to start to allocate money for the new firehouse, which it could do by bonding the project, or funding it in the annual budget or capital plan. They said the town should still quickly move ahead with the project due to the deterioration of the current facility.
Gilpin said Oswegatchie volunteers will be allowed use the current building until a certificate of occupancy is issued for the new building, at which point the fire company will have a 20-year-lease for a portion of the building.
Oswegatchie Fire Station Building Committee Chairman Robert Tuneski said the size of the new, one-story building, with a small interior mezzanine for storage and equipment, is a little more than 10,000 square feet.
He said the estimated construction costs range from $800 to $1,000 per square foot. In addition, there will be costs for design, permitting and legal fees, among other items.
At Monday night’s RTM meeting, the building committee was slated to ask RTM members to change the project from two phases to three, and transferring $286,000 to pay for phase two, which calls for the creation of construction documents. The transfer had already been approved by the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance.
Tuneski said the construction documents are necessary in order to put the project out to bid, which he hopes the RTM will approve in April.
He added the building committee will likely not have a construction cost estimate until June.
“I’m hoping that some of these politicians on the RTM do their due diligence and come down here,” Pafias said, extending an invitation for them to tour the building. “The same goes for the taxpayers.”
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