The Wright City Fire Protection District planned to award a $9.2 million bid for a design-build contract for a new Station 1 and upgrades to Station 3 at the May 8 board of directors meeting.
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This story has been updated to reflect information from the May 8 Wright City Fire Protection District Board of Directors meeting.
The Wright City Fire Protection District awarded a $9.2 million bid for a design-build contract for a new Station 1 and upgrades to Station 3 at the May 8 board of directors meeting.
Those funds are part of the $11-million bond issue approved by voters in November 2024 and the bid was awarded to Layneco Construction Services in O'Fallon.
Of those funds, $6.7 million will be dedicated to the construction of a new Station 1 and the remaining $2.5 million will be allocated to upgrades to Station 3 at the intersection of Routes WW and J in Lincoln County.
Fire Chief Ron MacKnight said the district was working to make use of the bond funds as efficiently as possible. The district went out for bond on March 4 and has established committees to direct the plans for Stations 1, 2 and 3.
The new Station 1 will be built on the east side of Bell Road north of the American Bank and will replace the current Station 1 on Second Street.
MacKnight said the projects would run consecutively to keep the district’s fire trucks protected from the elements.
“We’re going to focus on Station 1 first, and then I think once we get under roof over there, then we’ll start on the major pieces of house three,” said MacKnight.
MacKnight said the district has outgrown the building on Second Street, and there are ongoing safety issues with the building and its location. He said the district plans to sell the current location once the new building is completed.
“We’re just going to put it on the market, because we’re concerned about those (train) tracks, and we’re concerned about the space,” said MacKnight. “We can’t, in my mind, justify occupying a building that we told the public was unsafe.”
There were also concerns with carcinogenic materials associated with firefighting that have permeated Station 1 as it predates modern safety practices.
MacKnight said while designs for a new Station 1 are still being finalized, the new building will be in line with modern standards and will include “hot,” “warm,” and “cold” zones to isolate exhaust fumes from trucks and dangerous materials from firefighting away from the living quarters in the building.
The “hot” zone would house all of the trucks and equipment and the “warm” zone would serve as a buffer between the equipment housing and the living quarters.
“Your cold zone would be, there’s no chance of contaminants being in there, so maybe your offices, and your bunk rooms, and your kitchen and your day room for the firefighters,” said MacKnight.
In design-build contracts like the one being used for Stations 1 and 3 contractors are given a price tag and a list of required items and conduct the design and construction phases under one contract.
While there is not a concrete timeline for the project MacKnight said he hoped to break ground on the new Station 1 by the end of the year.
The $2.5 million in updates for Station 3 are still largely undetermined but they planned to expand the building, either by adding on to the existing structure, or disassembling the building’s metal shell and using it to rebuild a larger station.
“We had drawn some plans for just a small build out, adding another apparatus bay, expanding the kitchen and office area, and adding some bedrooms,” said MacKnight. “There’s a couple contractors, … that said it might be easier to disassemble the building, leave the shell of the apparatus bay and then expand out that way.”
The district also allocated $1 million from the bond in December for the purchase of a new pumper truck, which MacKnight expects to receive in the summer of 2027. Another $300,000 of the bond was spent on paying the remaining debt from the district’s newest fire truck once the funds were received.
The remaining $500,000 will be used to make some updates to Station 2 which is on Wildwood Lake Drive on the south side of Wright City. MacKnight said they had not made any plans yet for that project but mused they could upgrade the HVAC system and make some aesthetic improvements to the volunteer station.
Per the bond language, the district has three years from the issuance date of the bonds to spend the money. MacKnight was confident the projects would be completed before that deadline on March 4, 2028.
