New Central Fire Station appears headed to one of three sites on First Avenue East

CEDAR RAPIDS - The city's new Central Fire Station looks like it is headed to one of three blocks on First Avenue East.

The city's Fire Station Relocation Advisory Committee embraced the Fire Department's own in-house committee's recommendation that the new Central Fire Station, which will replace the flood-ruined on Third Street NW, go at one of these three sites:

The 600 block of First Avenue NE (between First and A avenues NE), now home, in part, to a Taco Bell restaurant.

The 600 block of First Avenue SE (between First and Second avenues SE), which now houses, in part, The History Center.

The 700 block of First Avenue SE (between First and Second avenues SE), now home, in part, to the former Emerald Knights property.

Fire Capt. Andy Olesen, a member of the department's in-house committee, told the advisory committee at a meeting Thursday afternoon that the department considers the three sites “about a wash” in terms of preference.

Assistant Fire Chief Mark English, a member of the advisory committee, said the Taco Bell site, because it is on more of a grade, is the more topographically challenged. But he said it would work.

The advisory committee, headed by Barry Boyer, president/CEO of Van Meter Industrial, decided to have fire officials, Grey Eyerly, the city's flood-recovery director, and representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management develop some cost estimates for the three properties under consider.

The least costly property likely will set the amount that FEMA is willing to pay for any of the three sites unless the Fire Department and the advisory committee can make a case that one site provides a better site based on response-times and other specific criteria, Roger Hayes, from the state agency, told the advisory committee.

Eyerly thought the cost numbers would be back within two to four weeks.

All three sites under consideration will allow the Fire Department to close its Station 3 near Coe College and move the station to the city's northwest side, where the city now has a gap in fire response times, Capt. Olesen told the advisory committee.

The department's preference actually would also be to move Station 8 on the city's southwest side farther south.