By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
Fire Station 29 in Admiral has been slated for remodeling and seismic-safety upgrades since voters passed a citywide levy 11 years ago.
For at least a year, the city has been saying that while the work is under way at Station 29, its engine and personnel would be based from the same Harbor Avenue industrial site that was interim home to North Delridge’s Station 36 during its now-complete upgrades. The $1.8 million contract has now been awarded, and Station 29 work is soon to start.
Then suddenly last Wednesday, the city was sending reps door-to-door around a triangle of SDOT right-of-way a block northeast of the current station – between 44th SW, Ferry SW, and SW Hill, across the street from Admiral Congregational Church and A Child Becomes Preschool – telling neighbors the plan had changed at the last minute, and that the triangle would house the interim fire station instead, for about a year, a tight fit at best.
Since our first report that afternoon, we have pursued follow-up questions, and neighbors have been mobilizing. Their point, in a Saturday-morning gathering attended by City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen, is that they’re not against having firefighters nearby (they’re already on the block) – they’re concerned about the size and safety of the newly designated site, and the lack of transparency in keeping the change under wraps until the last moment.
Saturday morning’s meeting was organized by neighbor John Noonan, who said that a contractor “spray painting lines in our yard a few weeks ago” gave the first hint of the new plan, though no one would confirm it until the notification on Wednesday. (We first inquired with the city on January 2nd, the preceding Friday, but did not get confirmation until January 7th. The most-recent status report for fire levy projects, dated November 26th, said the “site search” for interim Station 29 was complete by then, without listing an address, and that “preliminary design” had begun – yet no public word of the site change emerged until six weeks after that.
After notification last Wednesday, Noonan immediately started contacting city reps with safety concerns including:
Emergency vehicles don’t drive slowly, and the new location will introduce at least one additional intersection for the fire trucks to go through before reaching California Ave, that doesn’t have a signal of any kind. The proposed driveway for the fire truck is directly adjacent to another family that has young children. … Also, the mobile home will be built so close to the street on 44th Ave SW, it’s going to create a major blindspot on 44th & SW Hill St. … The building is tremendously oversized for the property. Parents load & unload their kids to the [Admiral Church] preschool four times a day right there but cars now won’t be able to see them until they’re very close. The same for churchgoers in the busy time before service. The proposed driveway for the fire truck is directly adjacent to another family that has young children. What about crosswalks, stop signs, signals? Has anybody from the city even considered the safety aspects?
Other concerns include parking; we counted, during the Saturday morning meeting, 16 vehicles along the triangle or immediately across the streets on its east and west sides (the church/preschool parking lot is immediately north).
Councilmember Rasmussen suggested on Saturday morning that a community meeting seemed in order. There had been a City Council hearing related to the Station 29 project in late summer, but at that time, there was no word of a change in the interim location.
In response to one of our followup questions from last week, city Finance and Administrative Services spokesperson Cyndi Wilder said SFD had initiated the eleventh-hour request for a location change. “Seattle Fire Department requested in late 2014 that the temporary station be moved to Fire Station 29’s service area and on top of the hill, which prompted the new site. Due to the timeframe in which the Fire Station 29 project must be completed, a new site for the temporary fire station was limited to City-owned or other immediately developable properties. Temporary Fire Station 29 will be placed on City-owned property and SDOT right of way, therefore the development requires SDOT permits; it does not trigger a land-use process.”
We’ll be checking tomorrow on the status of those permits.
There also is Seattle Public Utilities involvement, as they have a water-quality-testing installation (photo above) on the north side of the triangle, and that apparently has to be moved. “No Parking” signs that were up at the site on Saturday morning suggest some work will begin as soon as Tuesday.
Wilder mentioned a timeframe for the project’s completion – that was a reference to the fire levy passed in 2003 running out this year.
Back to the reason for the location change, that part of our inquiry was forwarded to SFD spokesperson Kyle Moore, who said, “The Seattle Fire Department ultimately decided that the temporary fire station needed to be on top of the hill, close to the existing station, in order to maintain rapid response times for emergencies. … To give you an example, if a person in Fire Station 29’s experienced a medical problem and needed a fire unit, the average response time would increase from 4 minutes to 6 minutes. When it comes to medical events that involve cardiac arrest, every second counts. In addition, inclement weather, including snow and ice on the roadways, would delay emergency responders as they navigate up the hill from the temporary Harbor Avenue location. By keeping the temporary station in the neighborhood, quick emergency response times are maintained.”
The new location does not require new materials, according to Wilder: “The tent and trailer are the same ones used at other temporary fire station projects.” She didn’t say exactly what from the former interim Station 36 would be moved up the hill; here’s what is still visible at the Harbor Avenue site that was originally going to be used:
The city has continued a month-to-month, $2,003/month lease on that site – Port of Seattle property – in the six months since FS 36 moved back to its permanent site, but Wilder says, “Once the remaining tents and trailers are relocated to the temporary sites for Fire Stations 32 and 29, the lease will be terminated. … There is no cost to lease the SDOT property where temporary Fire Station 29 will be located.”
We are told by a source that at least one other site that was considered, as an alternative to the Harbor Avenue site, also would not have costs to the city – a section of Ferry Avenue in front of the current station.
So what’s next?
Councilmember Rasmussen promised to look into questions brought up during the Saturday morning gathering, “to get answers as quickly as possible.”
“We love our firefighters,” Noonan told him, “but this is out of size for the triangle.”
Rasmussen acknowledged that the site seemed “tiny.” For a fire station, anyway; neighborhood kids have been using it as a mini-park, and one was kicking a ball around as the meeting wrapped up.
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