Battle Creek Fire Department seeks to modernize its facilities

Editor’s note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave’s On the Ground Battle Creek series.

BATTLE CREEK, MI — Gender-neutral bathroom facilities at many businesses and organizations are there by choice. Not so for the Battle Creek Fire Department which is seeking a $20 million plus bond to bring its buildings into the 21st Century.

An additional $5 million has been added in some of which will be used to for work on the HVAC system at Kellogg Arena and upgrades at Claude Evans Park, says Battle Creek City Manager Rebecca Fleury.

“We’re trying to get as much of that $25 million as we can in the fire stations. We’re looking at $22 to $23 million for the fire stations. It will all depend on how much the actual bids are for work on the fire stations as well as the arena.”

Although two out of the department’s 80 firefighters are female and work at different stations on different shifts, Fire Chief Bill Beaty says, “Male and female firefighters are sharing one bedroom space and the bathroom at Station 6 is a big open bathroom so they have to pay attention and put signs on the doors when it’s occupied by women or men.

“The crews just adapt whenever there’s a female in the house. But, when males and females are taking care of business it makes it a little more difficult.”

Potty parity aside, Beaty says the larger issue for his firefighters is the age of each of the six operational stations. The newest one, Station 6, was built in 1974. The oldest two – stations 2 and 3 – were built in 1902 and 1903 respectively, he says.

“We’ve reached the point where I can’t recommend tax dollars going into stations the age of 2 and 3,” says Battle Creek City Manager Rebecca Fleury. “We are hopefully going to have a workshop with city commissioners in July and August to share all of the feedback we got through community conversations in order to do the next steps which will be looking at bond financing.”

The current proposal includes building a new Station 2 near the current one and remodeling and expanding stations 1, 5, and 6 with a recommendation to close Station 3 and relocate that crew to Station 1, Beaty says.

There has been what Fleury describes as a “small, vocal group” that has raised concerns about the closure of Station 3 which is located on Cliff Street across the street from the Post Foods plant.

“We want to work with the neighborhoods around stations 2 and 3 to envision what its next life looks like,” Fleury says. “We have no intention of demolishing the buildings because they’re historic. I know this doesn’t make it better, but at least residents know we respect that building.”

This respect was elevated with the hiring of local architect and Battle Creek native Cody Newman to work on the design of the project.

“Cody is a Battle Creek person. He understands the character of the buildings we have and the importance of fire stations in neighborhoods,” Fleury says. “The final product probably won’t look exactly like his drawings because of resident input.”

Station 3, she says, is “small and landlocked with no room to grow there.  We’ve reached out to property owners about buying up property around it and as soon as they know it’s the city, their asking price becomes $2 million.”

She says Station 2 on N. Washington Street, diagonal to the Hart Dole Inouye Federal Center, must be maintained because data shows that it responds to the most calls for service.

“We want our community members to know that this is a data-driven informed and well-informed process,” Fleury says.

Stations 2 and 3 were originally built to house horses which were used to pull fire trucks in the early 1900s and both have haylofts in them to store hay for the horses. Beaty says fire apparatus has changed over the last 120 years and the buildings weren’t designed to accommodate these changes. Currently, stations 1 and 6 are the only buildings with capacity for ladder trucks.

“I don’t know if it’s so much impeded us, but most buildings over three stories tall are located downtown. The response time where we may need a ladder truck to reach three or four stories takes time,” he says.

In addition, the electricity powering the stations is outdated which presents challenges with upgrades to technology.

“We got a new backup generator and spent thousands of dollars to rewire because the wiring is so old,” Beaty says. “We need to update and upgrade the facilities themselves. Training and technology have changed a lot since the time these stations were built. Remodeling and expanding will allow us to modernize and improve the ways crews go out to serve the public.”

Another overriding concern is the open-bay dorm configurations.

“You walk in the bedroom and there’s a whole bunch of beds lined up. Whereas with the newer stations, we have individual bunk rooms that are gender-neutral,” Beaty says. “This is our firefighters’ home for one-third of the year. Even if the general public realizes this, it doesn’t resonate with them. People don’t look at our fire stations as homes. We’re at work and at home at the same time.”

A slow-burning flame ignites
 
Discussions about the need for an overhaul of the city’s fire stations were in play in 2014 when Fleury was hired as City Manager.

In 2015 and again in 2022 outside organizations were brought in to study the department’s current layout, says Beaty who has been Fire Chief for 19 months.

“They’ve told us since 2015 that we need to pay attention to the stations and how they are laid out and the need for modernizing. Rebecca and I started talking about a potential bond issue last year.”

“We agree that the city has got to play a little catch-up here with our investment in the fire stations,” Fleury says. “We’re trying to create a new baseline for all of the fire stations and put plans in place so we know what we’re doing with this major investment.”

The bond amount was set at $25 million because that’s what the city could afford, Fleury says.

“That’s the most our budget could support. We can’t exceed the life of the project. If it was just a new build it could go to 30 or 40 years but our project includes buildings that don’t have a life expectancy of 25 years,” she says.

Between April and June, community conversations were held at each of the six fire stations to hear from residents. During these gatherings, Beaty says he, Fleury, and Newman talked about the reasons why and the fact that these stations are also home to the city’s firefighters.

“Those are the things we put out to the community,” he says. “Firefighter health and safety including mental health was not thought about in the same way years back and the world is different today.”

The way firefighters are notified of calls for service also are under consideration as is upgraded ventilation as a cancer preventive.

“We’ve put in something other than bells and whistles into what we propose. Sleep issues are linked to coronary health. Firefighters have higher risks of getting cancer than anyone else. When we’re configuring the layout of the rooms, ventilation is a big thing. This is about much more than just gender-neutral making facilities safe for our members. We’re hoping that as potential recruits see us doing all these things it will help attract more candidates to our fire department.”

Nationwide, fire departments are facing recruitment shortfalls.

“We believe with the upgrades we’re proposing to do it will actually help us,” Beaty says. “Young folks will see that we’re looking out for all firefighters not just the guys. When we get in front of commissioners that’s what we’re going to tell them as well.”

In anticipation of city commissioners supporting and approving the bond, money has already been set aside in the city’s new budget which will cover the cost of the first bond payment, Fleury says.

The approach used to pay back the bond amount will be similar to one that has been used with the Battle Creek Police Department. In this scenario, the city pays for the first one to three years of support and then asks the police department to absorb the remaining funds into their budget, Fleury says.

“This is a long time overdue,” Beaty says. “This stuff pre-dates Rebecca by decades. Some of this should be addressed 50 years ago. The bottom line is that what’s being proposed will enable us to better serve the 44 square miles we serve in Battle Creek.”