BY BRISTOW MARCHANT
bmarchant@heraldonline.com
January 3, 2015
YORK — A muddy field off McFarland Road southeast of York might not look like much today, but it could be the face of the future of rescue services in York County.
Newly poured concrete already marks the outlines of a building complex that, by the end of the year, will make up the new York County Fire Training Center. On Friday, that vision will come that much closer to reality when officials come together for a groundbreaking ceremony at the site of the new facility.
Friday’s event is only the beginning of a construction project scheduled to finish in November. Once work is 3complete, firefighters from York County and beyond will have a fully modern facility for training, instruction and vehicle maintenance that offers more than the current fire center on Ogden Road in Rock Hill.
“This is about getting what we need for the next generation of firefighting,” said David Hord, chairman of the county Board of Rural Fire Control, which is overseeing construction of the new training center. “The place on Ogden Road has served its purpose, and now it’s time to head into the future.”
Fire Safety Director Billy Weatherford sums up the problems with the smaller, 30-year-old facility that houses the county’s fire headquarters by pointing to the restroom situation, which caused a conundrum when a training class wanted to use the burn building at the same time the center’s one classroom was hosting a leadership seminar.
“There’s only one restroom, and it’s inside the classroom, so anybody coming in from outside will disrupt the other class,” Weatherford said. “We can really only have one class at a time.”
The new facility will feature:
- Three classrooms, with the option of opening folding walls to create one large room capable of holding more than 100 people
- Two separate training towers
- Four fire bays to house engines for maintenance or fabrication needs
And, better restroom facilities.
Rather than holding a groundbreaking in an open field before any work began, officials waited until they had something to show off. Rough grading at the site has already been done, a retention pond was dug to hold stormwater runoff, and concrete footings were poured for the future administration building. The plan was to have a concrete slab for the main building in place before the groundbreaking, but heavy rains in December delayed that work.
“We realized going into this in the fall and winter that bad weather should be anticipated,” said Chris Whitley, project manager for Cumming Construction Management, the company the county has hired to manage building projects. “Right now, we’re right on schedule.”
More bad weather could threaten to cancel this week’s ceremony. Rainfall was so heavy at the site last week, Weatherford said, “we could hold a fishing tournament out there.”
The fire safety department and the fire control board have kept close tabs on the new center throughout the process. At the very beginning, the board put together a training center committee, which includes firefighters, to propose ways to meet the county’s training needs, and officials have met with project foremen weekly to follow its progress.
Committee members looked at the possibility of renovating the existing fire training center, Hord said, but decided their needs could be better met by a new facility.
“We knew we needed to do something, so we worked with the (County) Council on getting the funds, and the committee looked at facilities in North Carolina and South Carolina to decide what we needed,” he said.
Crews have cleared 23 acres on the site for the training center, which includes another 20 acres for possible future expansion. Other uses considered for the site include offices for the York County Sheriff’s Office and an urban search-and-rescue facility focused on handling building collapses.
The next phase of construction will involve digging the footing for the shop building, which will double the county’s capacity to service engines from firehouses across the county.
“It’s laid out now,” Whitley said, “we just haven’t had a window of time yet to dig the footing.”