The fire district, which has two stations in Wilsonville, was scheduled to close on a property in Tigard June 30, according to division chief Gary Wells. The property cost the district $8.2 million, far less than the $15 million it would have cost to add its “command and business operation center,” or CBOC, to Station 56 in north Wilsonville.

Now, the district can use the savings to move its headquarters to Tigard and still provide upgrades to Stations 56 and 52 in Wilsonville. In all, the district will spend $18 million on the three projects.

More bang for their buck

If the district had stayed with its original plans to move CBOC to Wilsonville, that Elligsen station, currently about 17,000 square feet, would have become a 50,000-square-foot structure to house both a fire station and an additional 60-70 employees.

The current command and business center in Aloha was built in 1979 to support five stations. Today, it supports 23.

“Space is a real problem and we have very poor transportation access to other areas of the district, including Wilsonville,” said Walt Peck, director of community services.

The new property, called Dartmouth Square, is located at 72nd Avenue and Dartmouth, in Tigard, and includes a three-story building.

Wells expects CBOC to be moved into the property by this time next year.

The new center will house the command staff, all core business operations, human resources, finance, IT and communications functions, some logistics, a community room and an emergency operations center.

“This facility … will be, when a major disaster occurs in our response area, the focal point for our management of that event,” said Peck. “It will adapt quickly with stored materials, the ability to readily deploy computers and maps. We can create a nerve center for our operations.”

Neither the fire district or fire board wanted to move its central operations to Wilsonville, positioned on the southern edge of the district, said Wells.

Currently, the operations center sits in Aloha, on the district’s northwest edge. Officials were looking for something much more central.

But in 2006, the economy just wouldn’t allow it.

“Land and building values in that particular area (we wanted) were skyrocketing,” said Wells. “Our best estimate, and we spent a lot of time talking to brokers, was that it was going to cost in the neighborhood of an additional $4 million premium as opposed to using the property we had in Wilsonville.”

The board grudgingly, he said, made the call in 2006 to relocate CBOC to Wilsonville, rather than to a more central location near the junction of Highways 99W and 217.

“The $4 million premium wasn’t justified,” Wells said. “That was a decision made reluctantly, but it was an economic one.”

The fire district would be using funds from a November 2006 voter-approved levy that provided $77.5 million for capital projects. Wells, who directs these projects for the district, has been searching for 15 years to re-locate the command center.

The recently-purchased Dartmouth property is within one-half mile of where he originally started searching in 1994.

“Things have changed significantly since 2006 when we decided to move operations to Wilsonville,” Wells said. “In essence, prior to committing totally to Elligsen Road, we were directed to go out and look, to see if changes in the economic situation made reconsideration possible. What we determined was that things had changed drastically in our target center.”

They found that it would cost the district approximately the same to purchase the new commercial building in Tigard and construct a smaller office building in conjunction with the rebuild of Station 56 as it would to build a large structure in Wilsonville.

“Dartmouth gives us immediate access to I-5, with fast access to 217 and 99W,” Peck said. “We are really able to access the district much more efficiently from that property, which was behind the board’s rationale. If we could afford it, it would be logical.”

Having access to the regional transportation system is valuable for TVF&R, the largest fire district in the state.

“The location of our current facility made sense 30 years ago, but it is geographically isolated today,” Peck said. “By contrast, the new CBOC is at the intersection of all major transportation routes.”

Changes at Elligsen

Even though CBOC will be located in Tigard, TVF&R still plans to provide a $5 million to $6 million upgrade at the Elligsen Station and construct an adjoining office space to house its south operating center.

The building will be completed torn down and rebuilt, mainly because the station does not meet current seismic codes.

“There’s no way to make it a good building,” said Wells. “The best scenario is to push it over and start from scratch and do it right. We have not had a commitment from staff and the board that it’s what we’re going to do, but it’s been the plan all along.”

Wells anticipates a 20,000 to 24,000 square foot fire station and office complex. The fire station will be slightly smaller than the recently completed Walnut Station in Tigard.

“We’re only going with a two-bay station as opposed to three (as with Walnut Street),” he said The rest of the station will be similar to the district’s other new stations in West Linn and Progress.

“Our fire station layouts are very, very similar,” Wells said. “The kitchens, the sleeping rooms, the bay room, the workspaces are all very similar.”

The office space built as part of the Station 56 project will house the district’s south division center, which currently leases space in Tualatin for $88,000 a year.

Some programs from the district’s training center, between Sherwood and Wilsonville, also will be moved to the Elligsen station.

“I can’t give an exact time frame, but we’ve got to reach some decisions,” he said. “Now that we’ve resolved the command center, we can make decisions about who’s going there.”

Wells said the Elligsen station should expect the changes to happen within the next 18 to 24 months. Construction will take 12 to 14 months.

Separate, but equal

Station 52, located on S.W. Kinsman Road and S.W. Wilsonville Road, will receive $1 million in improvements within the next two to three years, said Wells.

“It was built in the early 1990s under less strict seismic code,” he said. “We’ll do some structural strengthening, not totally extensive, but some additional reinforcing.”

In addition, funds will be used to provide separate but equal facilities for male and female firefighters.

“When we built the station, we didn’t have a single female firefighter,” Wells said. “Now, we’re doing a better job of equal but separate facilities for locker rooms. That is a key component of every bond-funded program. Sometimes you have to make do with what you have. Some places end up all right. Others, we go back and fix, so there’s equal distribution for everybody. The number of females in the district is growing, and we have to prepare for that.”

Competitive pricing

The fire district’s building projects have come fortuitously with the economy.

It has allowed the district to buy low and wait to sell high, said Peck.

It also allows the district to give up leased space and gain favorable rates on bonding, said Peck.

“We’re getting extremely favorable interest rates, like 3.7 percent, because the fire district has the best bond rating of any fire district in the United States,” he said. “It’s a testament to the conservative fiscal management of this organization, and the reserves we have in place.”

When the district bundled three improvement projects into one bid recently, “we saw incredibly competitive bids for those stations,” said Peck, with the winning bidder coming in $1.5 million below their own engineer’s estimates.

“These difficult times are producing some good values for taxpayers,” he said. “It’s a small silver lining, but it is one nonetheless.”

Overall, Peck said the current building projects improve building safety and reliability, while giving taxpayers the best value.

“We do think these are prudent business moves,” he said. “We certainly understand that even in a period of time where we’re able to get good deals, we’re dealing with large sums of taxpayer dollars, and we need to get a great return. We feel like we’re achieving that.” n