City chooses location for new fire station

The City of Kodiak decided this week where to build their new fire station.

They settled on a lot at 1240 Mill Bay Road, which the city purchased a few months ago.

According to Fire Chief Jim Mullican, the location will work.  “I can support this site, 100%. It’s outside the inundation zone which is a huge thing for us. Response time wise, it’s closest to the location that we need to be. It gives us almost equal response time to both ends of the city and both sides of the city.”

Chief Mulligan did ask that they build six bays, instead of the initially proposed five bays, for the department’s vehicles. That would add $700,000 to the project’s cost, which is hovering around $25 million. So the city is looking to Alaska Representative Don Young, who said the project is a candidate for federal funding, and to the state to alleviate the costs.

Council member Rich Walker: “I actually think we’ve found our site. We’ve looked everywhere. We’ve walked every one of these sites. I’ve been on the committee, and seeing we can make this work, just makes common sense.”

This news surely comes as relief to residents who have been concerned that the city was strongly considering Coon Field as a fire station site, as Brian Himelbloom testified. “There’s a problem with Coon Field; we should call it Carl Paul Coon Field, instead. This was a youngster who didn’t live to adulthood. It has an institutional memory. Actually today it was fully utilized with sports going on. It’s very convenient to the middle school, Main elementary, the high school.”

The new site on Mill Bay, though, will take away a parking lot from Baranof Park by the ice rink, but the city is hopeful that they can work with the Parks and Recreation department to build more parking nearby.

Now that the site has been determined, the next step is for the architects to draw up plans for what the new station will look like.