Santa Rosa breaks ground on new Fountaingrove fire station

Santa Rosa fire officials and county, state and federal partners convened recently on a vacant stretch of land in Fountaingrove that will soon be transformed into the department’s newest outpost.

The new Fire Station 5 will replace the Newgate Court station, which was destroyed in the Tubbs Fire nearly six years earlier. Fire crews have been working out of a temporary station on Parker Hill Road since 2018.

Last Friday’s groundbreaking ceremony marked a long-awaited milestone in the northeastern hillside neighborhood’s recovery following the October 2017 firestorm.

Fire Chief Scott Westrope said the department and community are excited to see construction start after years of planning.

“We were able to restore service to Fountaingrove in a temporary fashion, but to finally be able to break ground on the permanent fire station indicates to me that we’re home, that we’re here for the community and that our firefighters have a permanent place to work out of and serve the community from,” he said in an interview.

The new station, on the southeast corner of Fountaingrove Parkway and Stagecoach Road, is expected to improve response times in the neighborhood and help the department be better prepared for the next large emergency.

Construction is expected to be completed in spring or summer 2025.

The City Council in January approved awarding an $18.2 million contract to local firms Wright Contracting LLC and COAR Design Group to design and build the new station.

The total cost of the project, including acquisition of the land and preconstruction studies, is estimated at $24.8 million. The bulk of expenses are being paid through a $16.9 million federal grant and other fire recovery dollars.

The station will be built on a 2.1-acre portion of the Keysight Technologies campus that the city purchased in April 2022 for $205,000.

City officials opted to relocate the station rather than rebuild at the Newgate Court site after a review of department coverage and deployment plans following the Tubbs Fire. The review found the prior station was in a dangerously fire-prone area and too small to meet needs.

The new location is closer to Highway 101 where new homes in Fountaingrove are cropping up and future development is planned. It’s expected to shave off about a minute in response time from the temporary station on Parker Hill Road, department officials say.

The site is also bigger, which allowed the city to design a larger station.

The new 8,690-square-foot station, nearly double the size of the old one, will feature six dorm rooms and three apparatus bays to allow for additional staffing during red flag warnings and other extreme weather events, Westrope said.

The station can also be transformed into a command center, and there is space to set up a refuge for residents during emergencies.

A 10,300-square-foot operations yard has space for a generator that can power the station during power failures, storage space for extra fuel for fire trucks and ample parking.

The larger lot will also provide officials with room to build more defensible space around the station and create a building that is resilient and meets the highest fireproof standards, Westrope said.

The station on Parker Hill Road will be dismantled after the new station is built.

Council member Chris Rogers, speaking on the council dais after the ceremony, said rebuilding the station has been a long effort and he thanked city staff for their work and state and federal partners who helped bring in funding for the project.

“A lot of people worked hard to make that project happen and I know a lot of us were really happy to see shovels in the dirt finally,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Paulina Pineda at 707-521-5268 or paulina.pineda@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @paulinapineda22.