Bentonville's Fire Station No. 6 Foreshadows Growth

Bentonville Fire Chief Brent Boydston explains how the planned addition of Fire Station No. Six, which will be located on Southwest I Street, will affect coverage and response times for fire and EMS calls on the Western side of the department's jurisdiction at Fire Station No. 1 in Bentonville on Friday January 3, 2014.
Bentonville Fire Chief Brent Boydston explains how the planned addition of Fire Station No. Six, which will be located on Southwest I Street, will affect coverage and response times for fire and EMS calls on the Western side of the department's jurisdiction at Fire Station No. 1 in Bentonville on Friday January 3, 2014.

BENTONVILLE — Construction for the city’s newest fire station could begin as soon as February, according to Mark Clinard with Clinard Construction.

Clinard Construction will build Station No. 6 on Southwest I Street, north of the intersection with Southwest Regional Airport Boulevard.

Dirt work was completed before wintry weather hit, and construction packages will be sent to bid in January, Clinard said.

At A Glance

New Station

The boundary map for where Station No. 6 would respond is still being discussed. Southwest I Street will be split somewhere between Southwest 14th Street and Southwest Regional Airport Boulevard. Station No. 5, 800 S.W. Elm Tree Road, would cover north of the yet-to-be-determined line, and Station No. 6 would cover south of the line, Bentonville Fire Chief Brent Boydston said.

Source: Staff Report

“Construction should start, pending approval from City Council, sometime in February,” he said.

Construction is scheduled to take about seven months, according to Clinard.

Station No. 6 will be almost identical to Station No. 5, said Fire Chief Brent Boydston. The 8,000-square-foot building will have six bedrooms, a day room, kitchen, physical fitness room, three bays and one wash bay.

The six bedrooms will be built for “future purposes,” Boydston said.

Initially the station will operate with three firefighters for each 24-hour shift. The department will hire nine firefighters before the station opens — three this month, another three in three to five months and the last three just before to the station opening, Boydston explained.

The Fire Department has 64 fulltime, certified firefighters, which will increase to 73 with the hires, according to Boydston, who estimated the cost of the nine new employees to be about $500,000 a year.

The city already has the about $2 million needed for the building as it came from some impact fees restricted to growth-related needs, from money saved in prior years and from some of the increased sale tax revenue, said Denise Land, city director of finance and administration.

Thoughts of a station in the southwest area of the city have been around for years as the land for it was bought in 2005, Boydston said.

It’s the area of the city where most of the growth is headed as Bentonville is surrounded by Rogers, Bella Vista, Centerton and Cave Springs, Boydston said.

“The growth of the city has been headed that way since the airport was put in,” he said, explaining when Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport in Highfill was built, the city extended sewer and water lines to it. “As that line went out there, people started hopping on it, which brought them into the city.”

And it’s an area that will continue to grow. When Boydston checked a couple months ago, he said there were 250 building permits, mostly residential, for that area.

The new station will help keep the Fire Department’s ISO rating low, which is already one of the lowest in the state, Boydston said.

The Insurance Services Office rates departments based on a number of factors including staffing, equipment, dispatch, response times and water supply, and often insurance companies will use the ratings to set insurance rates for home and business owners.

Class 1 is the best rating and Class 10 is the worst. The Bentonville Fire Department is a Class 2, according to its website.

“Everybody wins with a lower ISO rating,” Boydston said.

With the southwest region’s projected growth, Station No. 6 will be needed in the future “without a doubt,” but officials and residents need to be cognizant of the extra cost it requires, Ward 3 Alderman Bill Burckart said.

If constructed and operated with good financial management, to build it is the right thing to do, he said.

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