Fire department takes first steps towards addressing aging station

The Wareham Fire District's Fire Station Study Committee has begun to search for architect firms to assess whether the fire station at 273 Main Street should be replaced with a new building, renovated, or relocated.

The committee met Tuesday, Nov. 18 with principal architect Todd Costa of architect firm Kaestle Boos Associates to discuss past work done with the company. The Wareham Fire District previously used Kaestle Boos to conduct a feasibility study in 2012. 

A feasibility study is an analysis that determines whether a proposed project or business venture is practical and likely to succeed.

The Wareham Fire Department is overseen by the Prudential Committee and a part of the Wareham Fire District. The district is a quasi-municipal government, with its own elected officials, bylaws and taxing authority.

The study included potential sites, designs and where the most frequent fire-related calls around Wareham come from, as well as project costs. The project fizzled out in 2018 and according to Costa, information from the 2012 study is too outdated for the new search.

The search for a replacement began again a few years later when the town proposed building a public safety complex to house several public safety services including the fire department.

The proposal would have potentially put Wareham Police and Fire in the former Decas School building but that plan did not come to fruition and fizzled out in 2022.

Wareham Fire Chief John Kelley said that he was around during the 2012 study, but that most of the original committee have left the department since then.

"Becasue we already paid for that study we were trying to go back and see what was done," Kelley  said. "There's very few people left from the original committee, I was there but I wasn't in a high position."

However, issues present in the 2012 feasibility study still remain with the Main Street fire station. 

"The working conditions continue to deteriorate, the number of employees has grown and now you're getting female firefighters — that dynamic is only growing," Costa said.

The Main Street station was built in the 1960s before the department had any full-time firefighters. Currently, five firefighters live at the station full-time and the amount of both personnel and equipment has significantly increased.

The current building also lacks adequate facilities for female firefighters. 

Alongside construction costs, a feasibility study would include equipment costs like furniture and technology. Costa said that the longer the department waits to build a new station, the higher the cost will rise. 

"Since I started there's never been a drop in construction costs," he said. 

The next steps for the committee will be to get a quote on a feasibility study which Costa estimates would cost around $100,000.

Once the exact cost of the feasibility study is finalized, the committee will determine if they look for other architectural firms to conduct the study.