Ravinia fire station top building priority, city says

Jan. 26--After quickly deciding that replacing the Ravinia Fire Station is the city's highest building priority, the Highland Park City Council must now decide what it can undertake and when, according to City Manager Ghida Neukirch.

Without any equivocation, city council members agreed in early January that replacing the cramped fire station was a higher priority than expanding the Highland Park Public Library or renovating the Highland Park Country Club facility to serve as a senior center.

But they weren't ready to relegate the library expansion and senior renovations to the back burner just yet. They asked city staff to look at whether parts of the library and senior center plans could be undertaken within the city's capital improvement budgets.

Williams Architects, which conducted the needs assessment for all three facilities, put the cost of a new fire station at $7.5 million and the cost of a modest library expansion at $13 to $15 million.

The cost of retrofitting the Highland Park Country Club clubhouse and banquet facility to serve as a new senior center was estimated at $9 million to $12 million by the firm.

Neukirch said Jan. 22 that a deeper discussion of project sequencing would be on a committee agenda in March or April.

"When can we do what, and how much are we talking about?" Neukirch said of the questions to be decided.

Council members reached a quick consensus Jan. 8 that replacing the Ravinia Fire Station at 692 Burton Avenue was a public safety issue and took funding precedence over two other projects that were studied in 2017.

The garage is so cramped at the 89-year-old fire station that the fire engine and ambulance cannot pull out of the bay at the same time, Fire Chief Dan Pease has said.

"Normally, an engine and an ambulance would pull out together, but at that station we have one or the other pull out first -- whoever gets dressed first," Pease said during a Jan. 8 council committee discussion.

"I can stand between the ambulance and the engine and (stretch my elbows) and I'm touching both rigs," he said. "You can imagine a firefighter trying to put on his gear in a timely way under those conditions."

The fire department operates two larger stations at 1130 Central Avenue and 1100 Half Day Road.

Mayor Nancy Rotering said there was no question in her mind that the fire station is the higher priority.

"We can come back and talk about the senior center and the library, but to me, if there is a challenge to our fire department to be able to operate out of one of our buildings ... that would come to the front of the line," Rotering said, noting the Ravinia Fire Station provides one-third of the city's fire protection services.

The city is considering reconstructing the Ravinia Fire Station at its current location or on the Brown Park property across the street.

As for the library and senior center projects, Neukirch said the city might address the parking shortage at the library now and undertake the expansion later. A parking and traffic study would be needed to determine the need for additional spaces, she said.

"The parking study would ascertain specifically the number of parking spaces being used and what is the appropriate number to (serve) the public and where those would be located," Neukirch said.

Several council members expressed interest in renovating the banquet facility at the Highland Park Country Club, which could bring in more revenue from banquet operations. The City of Highland Park is scheduled to assume responsibility for banquet operations from the Park District of Highland Park at the end of 2018.

Councilwoman Kim Stone said she'd like to see if the city could move senior programs to the country club with a smaller investment than the $9 to $12 million proposed by the architects.

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