A crowd of first responders and government officials gathered at Butti Way on Monday for the groundbreaking of Carson City Fire Station 55 and Emergency Operations Center.
Scott Neuffer / Nevada Appeal
An $18.4 million investment in public safety took physical shape Monday as a team of city officials and developers broke ground on Carson City Fire Station 55 and Emergency Operations Center located at 3505 Butti Way.
Mayor Lori Bagwell told the crowd the new facility will be interoperable.
“It’s going to let the whole city work together as an emergency operations center,” she said. “It’s going to benefit all the residents, but I’m going to be honest, it’s going to be a regional answer also. All of us that work in the public safety arena realize sometimes we need partners. When you have a big incident, you have to call on help. Carson City helps others, and others help us. This center is really going to be good for the entire region.”
Expected to be completed by summer 2025, the 18,000-square-foot facility will house a new fire station, an emergency operations center, IT office and a backup dispatch station.
Leaders in the Carson City Fire Department hope the station will help cut average emergency response times by two minutes, from six minutes to four, and provide coverage for the eastern part of the city.
“When completed, Fire Station 55 will significantly improve services and response times to the northeast side of Carson City,” said Fire Chief Sean Slamon. “It will also provide much needed relief to our two busiest fire stations, station 51 and 52, who will no longer be the first due units into this area.”
The new station will start with a minimum of three firefighters on duty every day, Slamon said.
“And that staffing will help improve our ability to respond to major incidents not only in this community, in this area, but throughout our great city,” he said. “The building will also be the location of Carson City’s first dedicated emergency operations center. The EOC will have state-of-the-art technology that will better support our community during major disasters such as wildfires, earthquakes and significant weather events.”
Providing context for the project, Sheriff Ken Furlong told the Appeal he worked as a dispatcher for the fire department when he was young.
The Carson City Board of Supervisors and project developers break ground on the new fire station and emergency operations center off Butti Way on Monday. From left, TSK Architects Principal Kevin Kemner, Public Works Director Darren Schulz, Core Construction Vice President Travis Coombs, Carson Supervisors Lisa Schuette and Maurice White, Mayor Lori Bagwell, Supervisors Curtis Horton and Stacey GIomi and CCFD Chief Sean Slamon.
“Barbara (Sanders) was my supervisor,” he said. “Back then, 18 years old, 19 years old — I’m 67 now — and we have the same stations that we had back when I was a child. We have not kept up. This is more than a groundbreaking. This is a huge step forward for the city modernizing our response capabilities, modernizing our services to the public. I love the location. The east side of Carson is in sore need of some response capability.”
When asked what it was like supervising a young Furlong, Sanders said, “no comment.” However, having retired in 1999, the groundbreaking was meaningful to her.
“I think it’s very important that we have this station,” she said.
Jenn Stoffer, current manager of the city’s 911 center, said the new facility will have backup space for dispatch should the existing center become inoperable.
“It’s very much a needed station,” she said. “We see the volumes. We see the need for it in the community, and we’re excited for it.”
The project was a priority for the Board of Supervisors. Monday, Bagwell thanked U.S. Congressman Mark Amodei, R-Nev., and U.S. Senators Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez-Masto, D-Nev., for procuring $2 million in federal community project funding. Additionally, $4.3 million of the city’s ARPA money was directed to the project. Other funding sources included capital improvement funding, an infrastructure bond, allocations from the city’s ambulance fund and developer contributions from nearby Lompa Ranch.
In February, supervisors approved Core Construction as the managing builder. The company specializes in educational, healthcare and municipal facilities.
Travis Coombs, vice president at Core, and Taylor Laack, project manager of the new station, are both 1996 Carson High graduates. They reminisced on growing up in the capital city and expressed the importance of working with first responders.
“We’re not firefighters, but being able to help and support them is… I mean, we love doing it,” said Laack. “It’s similar to schools. Being able to build things that are so meaningful and impactful to the community is awesome.”
“Honestly, there’s no better group to work for than our first-responders,” Coombs said.
The architect for the project is TSK Architects.
“These kinds of projects, projects for public safety, are some of the most cherished projects we get to work on,” said Kevin Kemner of TSK. “The next few months will be super exciting as it comes up out of the ground. And before too long, you’ll be serving your community out of this location here.”