Cold Spring City Council Moves to Advance Plans for New Fire Hall

(KNSI) — The Cold Spring City Council held a special meeting on Wednesday where it moved to continue making progress on a new fire hall.

Design has reached the 20% mark, with a new price estimate of about $8.6 million. This is the second attempt to get the facility built. Architect Laura Eysnogle tells KNSI News that since this project has been refined for years, all potential fat has been removed. It takes major alterations to the scope of the facility to affect the price tag.

“You’re cutting a significant portion of the building to make large cuts now. So, you’d be cutting off the training room or cutting off an apparatus bay.”

Some alternatives that will be looked at include changing the overhead doors on the north end opposite the public entrance, forgoing heating the floor and leaving the ceiling unpainted. Those steps would save money but not enough to fundamentally change the tax burden for the typical resident.

Dozens packed the chamber to give their say. A formal public hearing is set for March. The project could then potentially move to the last two phases of design. Eysnogle explains what each entails.

“Design development, it’s typically eight to 10 weeks in that we really started focusing on what’s going on in the facility in terms of details like, what kind of cabinetry are you putting in here? How does this function? Then we move into construction documents, and we work out the details of how it’s actually going to be constructed. So, it’s just drawing the documents at that point to make sure that the contractors can all competitively bid on the project.”

The last phase is another 10 to 12 weeks. That would keep Cold Spring from being able to seek bids until September at the earliest.

The other possibility is enough voters could sign a petition to take the issue to a referendum vote this August. Cold Spring has been trying to build a new fire hall for years. The current proposal is to build on a property the city bought located on Main Street just east of 2nd Avenue North.

Because it is zoned “Riverfront Commercial,” there are strict restrictions on the materials that must used on the exterior of the building. Eysnogle presented on this during the meeting, saying it further limits steps that could be taken to reduce the cost. The price tag has ballooned as inflation took hold following the COVID-19 pandemic.

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