A crowd gathered at the site of the new Fire Station #2 on Fountain Hills Boulevard Saturday morning, Dec. 1, to dedicate the facility to the public safety personnel who serve the town.

Mayor Linda Kavanagh said the new station reflects the town’s dedication to providing citizens with quality, efficient public safety services.

She said the town has expanded beyond the efficiency of the current Station #2 facility on Saguaro Boulevard south of Shea. The new site is located to provide faster response times over all of Fountain Hills and better balance the call load between the two stations, with #1 on Palisades Boulevard near downtown.

Fountain Hills Rural/Metro Fire Chief Dave Ott offered thanks to all involved in what turned out to be a long process in siting the station, hiring an architect (Hunt Caraway), and getting the contractor, Danson Construction, on site. Construction broke ground in January this year.

The new facility is 9,600 square feet with three truck bays and personal space for six firefighters. An ambulance crew now housed at the shopping center where Fry’s grocery store is located will be relocated to a home base at the new station.

There is also space dedicated to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in the new building.

Although the new station is not ready for crews to operate from, Ott said he is hopeful they will be able to move in by the end of the month, maybe by Christmas.

In 2009 the town applied to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for a grant available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Obama Administration program to stimulate the economy out of the Great Recession.

Though hundreds of such grants were awarded for fire stations across the country, Fountain Hills did not receive one. The project has been on the sideline since that time.

Fire Station #2 opened at its current location on Saguaro Boulevard south of Shea Boulevard in 1993. At the time the Fountain Hills Fire District was under contract to serve the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, and growth in the western parts of Fountain Hills was just beginning.

The town is exploring options to sell the site and/or building on Saguaro and put any proceeds back into the town’s Capital Improvement Fund.