Cold Spring Signs Purchase Agreement for New Fire Hall Site

(KNSI) — Cold Spring City Hall is the Swiss Army knife of municipal centers.

The building on Red River Avenue currently acts as city hall, fire station, library, and police station. Mayor David Heinen says there isn’t enough room for all four functions, which has been the case for 20 years. Things are in motion now to give some relief to a place that is bursting at the seams as a purchase agreement was signed Tuesday for the former home of Cold Spring Granite.

Heinen says the company was great to work with, even in the face of several document changes requested by the city to get to a final draft.

“It was basically different covenants and different things like that. Cold Spring [Granite] was very, very good with that. They agreed to a lot of things that we said.”

The parcel was the city’s first choice for a new fire hall but it walked away due to concerns over the price before the business came back to the table late last year.

Moving the fire hall will will kick off a dramatic reshuffling.

“The police department is going to move over to where the fire hall is, then the remodel of this building will probably happen after that.” He explained city administration is going to take up a large portion of that building, and added, “we might as well find a place for the library to house them because they’re going to be moving out of here, either way.”

The new fire hall will be significantly larger than the space available now but Heinen assures taxpayers the city council is making sure it does not break the budget. With a location set in stone, Cold Spring can begin the final design process.

The library committee meets again on May 16th with representatives from Great River Regional Library to plan the new branch. Members recently toured the location in Kimball, but want something bigger for Cold Spring.

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