Borough OKs site for new fire station

WASILLA — In an effort years in the making, Central Mat-Su Fire Department has received the go-ahead to buy land for a new fire station near Mat-Su Regional Medical Center.

“If you look at it, ISO was here in 2003,” Central Mat-Su Fire Chief James Steele said, referring to the Insurance Services Office that ranks fire departments for insurance companies. “That’s when they identified that because of the growth with the new hospital being built and the growth in that area that we needed to put another aerial ladder truck over in that area.”

So the department brought an aerial platform truck; a big, shiny machine capable of raising firefighters 100 feet in the air — the first of its kind in the Valley — paid for with $1 million in state grants. The truck was delivered in 2009.

The idea was to eventually move it to a new station built near the hospital, and here’s where the real estate market intervened.

The fire department already has a station near the hospital, but it isn’t nearly large enough to house the truck’s aerial platform. Upgrading it would have cost upward of half a million dollars — money that would be plowed into a building that doesn’t fit the department’s current plan to build all new stations with living quarters to accommodate 24-hour staffing as the department gets busier as the Valley grows.

It’s also on leased land and the lease is up in 2022. Steele said there was some talk about buying land from the owner of that parcel, but with its proximity to the hospital, the asking price is more than what assessors have said the land is worth. The borough is restricted by law from spending more than fair market value for a parcel.

It was a similar story with the only other parcel that was offered for the station recently. Steele said the negotiations just failed to reach an agreement that worked for the borough and the seller.

That’s kind of how things went for three years until finally a piece of land on South Terrace Court came on the market. The borough and the seller agreed on a purchase price of $720,000 for all four acres. The transaction was approved at the Nov. 20 assembly meeting.

“There was a billboard put up that said, ‘property for sale by owner,’ so we started looking at that property,” Steele said.

It’s the right size, has everything the borough needs. But, more importantly, it meets ISO’s requirement that the aerial platform be within 1.5 miles of the hospital. The land is 1.4 miles driving distance.

Differences between the different ISO classifications can mean thousands of dollars to homeowners who will be forced to pay higher insurance premiums if Central’s ratings drop.

“We’re really driven by the fact with ISO trying to get the ladder closer to that area to get full credit for ISO and try to maintain our ISO rating of a four, which is the lowest rating in the borough,” Steele said. “If we can put it over there then we get full credit for that aerial in that area.”

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.