Normal has approved a Design-Build contract with Core Construction for a new fire station. The new station will serve the east side of town. It will be located on the northeast corner of of Shepard Road and Hershey Road next to the Blackstone Trails subdivision. After the new station is opened, the existing fire station at College Avenue and Blair Drive will be decommissioned.
Normal Fire Chief Mick Humer explained why it was important to get this contract approved. The initial maximum contract price is $4.8 million and the initial completion date is within 18 months.
“We received a million dollar grant for this project and as a part of that grant you cannot start to do any planning or anything until you have a contract,” said Humer, “So all the planning that we have done has been internally to the fire department and to the town. We couldn’t go out and talk with a contractor and everything until we had a signed contract.”
In July 2022, Normal issued a request for qualifications for a design-build team for the design and construction of the station. After considering the qualifications of six potential teams, the Town selected Core Construction.
In April 2023, the Town council authorized staff to negotiate the contract with Core Construction that has now been approved.
“Their legal department, their lawyer and our lawyer negotiated the actual contract,” said Humer. “So now we can get to the crux of it and sit down with them and say OK we want a fire station. We think it needs to be 15,000 square feet. It needs to house ten firefighters, an engine, an ambulance and a rescue truck, whatever that would end up being.”
Local engineering firm Farnsworth Group is part of CORE’s team. Neil Finlen is the Principal of the Civil Engineering and Land Development team.
“Core was involved in this early on and approached us back in the day,” said Finlen, “So they were the ones that we had teamed with early in the process. Then we went through the Quality Based Selection and looking at the expertise of the teams and we were lucky enough to prevail and really look forward to continue all of the design.”
The project will be broken into three phases. Phase one includes preliminary and final design. This phase will involve public hearings giving members of the public an opportunity to offer input.
City Manager Pam Reece spoke regarding a survey that will now be sent out to residents near the site of the proposed station.
“It’s just going to be a real brief survey,” said Reece. “We don’t want to take to much of their time but we want to give them an opportunity to share with us any concerns that they might have about the idea of a fire station in their neighborhood, what would be top of their mind? Is it sirens? Is it light? What would be a concern that potentially we can address in the design phase?”
