Marion officials hammering out plans for new evidence shed, fire station

Marion officials hammering out plans for new evidence shed, fire station

City looking at cost, designs for new facilities

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Marion will meet with contractors and a designer to come up with plans for a police evidence shed, but officials are not sure yet what they want to do about Fire Station No. 1.

F& F Construction Co. and architect Tim McCullough submitted requests for design and build qualifications to the city to do the work on the shed and possibly for a new Fire Station No. 1.

Councilman Kelly O’Neal said both companies are well qualified for the job.

“I’m all for Tim,” said O’Neal, who chairs the city’s police and fire com- mittee. “I’ve worked with him in Memphis before on other projects. I like them a lot.”

F& F designed and built the office at the animal shelter and police station.

“I would anticipate the committee will accept this,” added Mayor Frank Fogleman. “Our experience was good with them (F& F). And based on his (McCullough) qualifications, they have done a lot of work for municipalities in the Mid-South region.”

The police department has run out of storage space at its headquarters for all of the paperwork and evidence files that it is required to retain.

The city plans to build either a new shed across the street from the police station or possibly one on the southwest corner of the old city shop.

Although there are no cost estimates yet for the storage shed, the city has $635,000 from a $16 million bond which was passed by voters this year.

“We will meet with them I’m hoping some time next week and tell them what needs to be done for the plans,” O’Neal said.

Fire Chief Woody Wheeless said they are still studying whether to build a new Fire Station No. 1 or add on to the existing building. The current station on Military Road isn’t large enough to hold a ladder truck.

The city may move the station west of the interstate to somewhere between Airport Road and the Interstate because there are more buildings which could potentially need the ladder truck in the event of a fire and firefighters would not have to navigate the dangerous intersection under the interstate overpass.

“That’s still up in the air as far as which direction we go,” Wheeless said. “Do we remodel there? Do we build a new fire station? And if we build, where do we build it? That’s the key issues right now.”

In the meantime, the city needs to fix Fire Station No. 2 on Carter Drive first, which needs another bay added on to the building and some structural work to the front of the building to address some leaks.

“Fire station 2 needs to be fixed first,” O’Neal said.

“It needs another bay added because the ambulance is sitting outside. And the building is old and falling apart.”

The city has $2.385 million in bond money for the

fire station projects.

By Mark Randall