Oconto Falls to build new $7-million fire station

Rich Palzewic

Staff

June 16, 2023

OCONTO FALLS – The City of Oconto Falls will soon get a facelift in the form of a new fire station.

The city will break ground later this month on the $7 million project located at 432 Union Ave.

“We’ve had a need for a new station for quite some time,” City Administrator Peter Wills said. “It will be a win-win for the city.”

The new station is being funded by a $7 million Neighborhood Investment Grant.

“In 2021, we ran across this grant that was for municipal buildings, but it had some restricted uses,” Fire Chief Tim Magnin said. “We did some research and made some calls to see if a fire station was eligible. We discovered it was an eligible build, so we had a few weeks to assemble some things.”

That, Magnin said, was in October (2021), and “we were told we’d have word by December.”

“We saw other municipalities received word they got the grants, but we hadn’t heard anything,” he said. “We just assumed we didn’t get selected. It wasn’t until late May 2022 that we were notified we got the grant.”

Wills said they originally started with 11 potential property sites to build the new station on.

“We narrowed that down to only one we owned,” he said. “That was a portion of Memorial Field that used to be the high school football field and a portion of Union Avenue that was a home that burned – we acquired after the home was gone.”

Response time, Wills said, was also a factor in where to build the new station.

“This was the best location in terms of both fire and volunteers who come to the station,” he said.

Wills said the new location also better meets the future needs of the city.

“Oconto Falls is building a new school and the hospital has relocated, so the new station will better serve the city’s major infrastructure,” he said.

Magnin said the response time of the new station will be about four minutes.

“From the time guys are paged, they get to the station and they leave, it’s right around that mark,” he said.

The projects will replace the current fire station on Jackson Street.

“It is back by the industrial part of the city,” he said. “There are a lot of side streets, stop signs and corners. The new location will be safer and quicker.”

Wills said because some of the bids – which were due June 1 – came back a little higher than anticipated – the city is working through some things.

“We’ve met with the architect and the construction manager to see if we can do a few alternate things,” he said. “Can we change a few things to make us get to within that $7 million? We haven’t brought anything to the City Council yet – we’re trying to work through and make decisions on this first.”

Wills said a projected completion date for the new station is next summer, with the building needing to be completed by the end of 2024 as mandated by the grant.

//17bec5072710cda5b8dd81b69f4c6e58.cdn.bubble.io/f1686938876650x822421926957600100/richtext_content.webpThe Oconto Falls Volunteer Fire Department currently has 34 firefighters. Fire Chief Tim Magnin said the goal is to expand that to 40 in the next five years. Submitted Photo

“Because the grant was announced so late, we got a slow start out of the gate,” he said. “It puts us on a quicker timeline. By the time we were notified of the grant, we had to get an architect and construction manager on board and get bids submitted. For a project of this size, it’s a tight schedule.”
 
Old fire station
Magnin said the city is planning to do a building analysis of the old fire station to see how it can be utilized going forward.

“That will determine its best use in the future,” he said. “If it was used as another city facility, it would take some modifications – whether that would be for utilities or the street department.”

Another option, Magnin said, is putting it up for sale.

“It might not work for the city any longer…,” he said. “We haven’t gone through that analysis yet. Our concentration right now is to complete the new fire station. An analysis of the old station probably wouldn’t happen until sometime in 2024.”
 
Amenities of the new station
Magnin said when the department applied for the grant, the main reason they did so was because the old fire station was short on vehicle space.

“We have vehicles parked where they shouldn’t be – it’s not the safest,” he said. “We also have a few trucks getting up there in age and will be needing replacement in the next 10 years. To replace them with the proper vehicle, we wouldn’t have a place to house them (in the current station).”

Magnin, who was hired as the department’s full-time fire chief tw?o years ago, said another reason is to have more office space.
“We want to delegate duties to other members to spread management out better,” he said. “We have no room for computers or office space. We basically run everything in one room.”

Magnin said the new station will also include more storage.

“We have no storage space left,” he said. “We actually have a metal container outside of the station for overflow.”

Training/meeting space and gear storage, Magnin said, are other needs the new station will help remedy.

“When we moved into the current building in 1987, we had 21 members on the fire department,” he said. “Now we have 34. My goal is to expand to 40 in the next five years. There would also be an area for fitness – maybe some weightlifting and cardio equipment to help keep everyone in better shape.”

Steady growth
Wills said Oconto Falls’ population has seen steady growth over the last few years, but it’s hampered by available housing.

“That’s one thing I’ve been trying to work on since I came here,” he said. “The city recently completed the Pleasant View Subdivision that only has three or four lots left.”

Wills said the city doesn’t have any available apartment buildings for rent and few homes for sale.

“We don’t even have a lot of property available to build on,” he said. “We anticipate some of our growth in the future will have to come from the surrounding areas.”

With that said, Wills said when new developments do happen in the future – residential or commercial – the new fire station will set up the fire department to effectively protect them.