Fire Station Building Committee | Town of Maynard, Massachusetts

mfd-engine-2 The Town of Maynard Fire Station was opened in 1955 at the apex of Main, Summer, and Acton Streets in Maynard’s then relatively quiet, downtown. Two years later, Digital Equipment Corporation let offices in an old woolen mill in town and changed the history of the town forever. DEC has been gone for more than 20 years – officially absorbed by Compaq in 1998, but the fire station remains. A lot has changed in the past 65 years and the fire service is no exception. An increased need for medical service provision is met by our department with basic life support ambulance and related equipment and specialized equipment for fire suppression, rescues, and hazardous material handling. This gear and the training our fire fighters receive combine to make our fire fighters, residents, and town, safer. Vehicles carrying this equipment and our fire fighters are larger, restricting space at the Station. The building housing the trucks, equipment, and staff is no longer adequate to meet the needs of the community.

At May 2015 Town Meeting, the townspeople voted funds to conduct a feasibility study for a new station. In the spring of 2016, the Select Board convened an ad hoc building committee to review the study results, set the scope of a new building, determine potential locations, and provide estimated costs and financing options.

The committee vetted 13 sites using a weighted evaluation tool that looked at multiple factors. We eventually narrowed our location choices down to five. Our top choice ended up being eliminated, at least temporarily, because of the obstacles involved with building at that location. We have since identified a suitable site and will be negotiating with the property owner on a price to acquire it. The site was originally one of our top choices with direct access to Sudbury Street, in the downtown area. It is approximately a single acre, give or take, and has no structures on it. It is a sloping lot both front to back and side to side. The second part of the FSBC was to look at funding options, but it was determined that a suitable site needed to be chosen first.

We feel that a fire station about 17,500-18,000 square feet is appropriate to meet the needs of the community. The current facility is about 9,000 square feet, with the major deficiency being the undersized apparatus floor. The apparatus and mechanical systems would comprise about 9,000 square feet and the remainder would be administrative and living space.