Sikeston officials discuss possibility of replacing troubled fire station

SIKESTON, Mo. -- Longtime structural and flooding issues at Sikeston Fire Station No. 2 have prompted officials to pursue a replacement.

At Monday's Sikeston City Council meeting, council members accepted the five-year capital improvement plan. Accepting the plan does not allocate funds to any projects, but does rank projects in the order in which city officials deem important. A new fire station tops that list.

"Our No. 1-ranked project by far is the replacement of Fire Station No. 2," said Sikeston City Manager Jon Douglass while presenting the capital improvement plan to the Council. "It's been coming up for several years."

Douglass said the fire station has two major problems with one being structural issues. The building is not earthquake resilient.

"We have major concerns about the ability of the roof to withstand a significant earthquake without falling in and also the front wall of the building," Douglass said.

Inside the building there are vertical cracks on the side walls near the front of the building and outside there are cracks where the bricks are separating. It also appears the front wall is tilting out towards the street.

The second major problem is flooding, something that has plagued the building for some time.

"We have pictures of the front bay doors closed with a foot of water up against those door," Douglass said. "And in most of those events like that they will simply open those bay doors and let water flow through off of Main Street through the fire station and out the back and down the hill."

Groundwater is also an issue and with any significant rain storm as the water table rises the living quarters toward the back of the fire station takes on water.

"It's not a good situation," Douglass said. "We've done a lot of repairs to the building. Nothing will keep that water out as long as the water table rises up and it seeps through the walls and the floor."

Douglass told Council the next step would be to a preliminary architectural report done in the future.

"In that an architect would take a look at our current space needs, what we project as needing, if we have a property in mind they would take a look at that property and come back to us with some estimates as to how many square feet, basic floor plan and some basic elevations," Douglass said. "That way we can have an estimate of the square foot cost of the building and we can start examining our financing options."

Sikeston Mayor Steven Burch asked if there determination to replace the fire station with one in the middle of town or two fire stations that would allow fire personnel to reach more areas of town quicker.

Douglass said while there has been a lot of discussions, building two fire stations would be more expensive than the city would like.

"In an ideal world where money was no object, putting a station somewhere further north and another on South Main would be ideal but the cost of having another fire station with the additional debt service and the additional operational cost is probably another $500,000 to $700,000 a year," Douglass said. "We really just can't see that as being very feasible."

Sikeston Department of Public Safety Director Jim McMillen added that the additional manpower it would take to man an extra fire station would be costly as well.

Burch also asked if the fire station could be rebuilt in the same spot the current fire station resides.

Douglass said that was a possibility but the current location sits in a flood plain and if built in the same spot they may be ineligible for grant funds.

Building up enough to get out of the flood plain is also not really a feasible option because the fire station is attached to another building that is currently occupied.

Douglass added that they would likely look at several different locations while in the preliminary phases.