Fire Department Station
Town of Oakland, Maine

After successfully completing the construction of a new police station in 2016, the Town of Oakland’s Facilities Committee identified the existing fire station as being the Town’s most deficient facility. The fire station had been built in 1955 when Oakland’s population was only one quarter of present day. At that time, Fire calls were less than a third of today’s and there were no rescue services in the fifties. In addition to the continuing deterioration of the structure and ADA non-compliance, new firefighting apparatus could not fit through the building’s overhead doors.

Brian E. Duffy Associates of Falmouth, ME, who designed the police station, was hired as the architect and Snowden Consulting Engineers performed the site design. Utilizing the conceptual architectural plans and site plan, a budget of $2,679,000 was developed for the entire project. The voters overwhelmingly endorsed the project at the polls in November 2018.

The new building’s footprint of 11,225 sf is sited adjacent to the existing fire station on a parcel of land donated to the Town by Messalonskee Stream Hydro. The facility was designed to provide a safe work environment, with optimum spaces to support the challenges of modern day firefighting and rescue. The main entrance lobby is monitored by the dispatcher in an area that features a console that is the nerve center of the building including radios, door access controls and a paging system. A corridor from the lobby connects to offices, conference room, standby room, bunk room and locker room. A large training space with audio/visual infrastructure supports the vigorous training requirements of the department. The training room and adjacent commercial kitchen are also available to the community.

The dispatch room overlooks the six apparatus bays, with large overhead doors on both the front and back of the building. Each bay has a hose reel with power and compressed air for the trucks and a state-of-the-art vehicle exhaust system with hoses that detach from trucks when exiting the building. Within the apparatus bay space is ventilated turnout gear storage, laundry room, compressor station for refilling self-contained breathing apparatus tanks and tool and mechanical rooms. A mezzanine was designed with one side for storage and the other side to support crew training requirements for window rescues, confined space, hose lines on stairs and entering smoke filled spaces.

The Town of Oakland Public Works Department performed all site work for the project at a considerable savings to the Town. The site scope included foundation excavation, utilities, site grading, storm drainage, landscaping and demolition of the existing fire station.

Following voter approval, CC of Maine was retained by the Town of Oakland for the project. Preconstruction services included budgeting for the project, issuing an RFP for the construction manager and coordinating the architect and the construction manager’s efforts to arrive at a GMP within the budget. During construction CC of Maine coordinated the Town’s site work with the building construction and provided contract administration while monitoring the overall project budget.

The project broke ground mid-April 2019 and it was substantially complete by the end of February 2020 with the project costs considerably under the Town’s original budget.