Fire to clear way for new facility

Evergreen moves toward new station

The Evergreen Fire Department is expected to burn its fire station to the ground sometime in March.

That's to make room for the new 19,000-square-foot fire station to be built on the same spot.

The project's contract manager - Swank Enterprises -is expected to seek bids in early March and to award contracts later that month to build the new fire station, said David Mitchell of CTA Architects Engineers, which is designing the new station.

The station's fire trucks and other equipment are expected to be outdoors just south of the site from March 15 through Aug. 15, when the bays should be ready to shelter the trucks again. The overall project is expected to be completed in December.

On Wednesday, the Flathead County Planning Board recommended that the county commissioners change the site's zoning from limited residential use to general business use. The fire station has not complied with its neighborhood's zoning for decades.

Last September, Evergreen voters approved by a 62 percent to 38 percent margin a $4.4 million bond issue request to fund the new fire station.

Evergreen is overhauling its main station because it is old, cramped and doesn't meet the department's needs.

The department has two stations - the staffed, 51-year-old, 6,500-square-foot main station on U.S. 2 and a small unstaffed one on Birch Grove Road. The main station also has a 1,216-square-foot trailer that serves as a bunkhouse.

The new main station will have five bays, a bunk room, more training areas, more room for vehicles and larger garage doors to enable the department to buy standard-sized vehicles, plus a community room able to hold 70 people.

A home with an assessed taxable market value of $100,000 will pay $67.99 a year, and a home assessed at $200,000 will pay $135.98 a year. A home assessed at $75,000 will pay $50.99 annually.

Last year, the fire department said the 2007 assessed taxable market value of a typical central Evergreen home ranges from $50,000 to $80,000. Homes in Hillcrest and Mission Village usually run from $85,000 to $125,000. North of Rose Crossing, the homes' assessed taxable market values range from $50,000 to $200,000.

Assessed taxable market values are government calculations and are not the private sector's appraised values or sales prices.

The Evergreen department has seen its calls double over the past four years.

The Evergreen Fire District covers 24 square miles of the Evergreen area, which holds about 9,000 people.