Santa Rosa Fire Station No. 5 Officially Breaks Ground
City and community members gathered on Friday, July 21, 2023, to officially break ground and kick off the Santa Rosa Fire Station No. 5 Resiliency and Relocation Project. The new station will replace the former Fire Station 5 which was lost in the October 2017 Tubbs Fire. The Tubbs Fire burned through parts of Sonoma, Napa, and Lake Counties, with its biggest impact being on the City of Santa Rosa. It is estimated to have burned a total of 36,810 acres of land and taken the lives of at least 22 people.
After the devastation of the Tubbs Fire, this resilient Santa Rosa community has been continuously building back parts of the City that were lost. The groundbreaking ceremony for Fire Station 5 was a true testament to how important this station is to the community, with City and State representatives attending to share their support.
Fire Captain Stavros Kalogirou and Fire Chief Scott Westrope addressed attendees, sharing their memories of the fateful fires and expressing their excitement for the station rebuild. The new station will be on a bigger parcel of land, providing a more defensible space for the station and allowing the station to accommodate more fire personnel.
State representatives and Sonoma County locals, Assemblymember Jim Wood and Congressman Mike Thompson, were in attendance. In his address to the crowd, Congressman Thompson said, “I’m reminded of the signs that we saw all throughout Sonoma County during this terrible, terrible period. If you recall, they said, ‘the love in the air is stronger than the smoke.’ It was about our whole community, the fact that our community was together; we were going to get through all of this together.”
Attendees got to see the rendering for the new station, which COAR designed to fit seamlessly within the Santa Rosa community. Also on display were items that were recovered from the previous Station 5. A helmet, badge, and toolbox, damaged by the fire, serve as a testament to the courageous fire personnel who fought selflessly to protect their community and prioritize others over themselves.
Congressman Thompson shared the story of how Chief Westrope saved other people’s homes while his own burned down. COAR hopes to give back a fraction of what these first responders have given to their community by designing and building a comfortable space to live and work, and soon moving fire personnel out of the temporary fire station and into a permanent facility.
Rendering of Santa Rosa Fire Station No. 5 by COAR Design Group
COAR Design Group and Wright Contracting have teamed together for the design and construction of the new 10,763 sf station. Some major goals of the final project are to improve response times for the service area and provide a forward command post for the City during future emergencies. COAR Design Principal, Christie Jewett, has spearheaded the design of the project, implementing elements unique to the local environment.
“The goal is always to create the most functional fire station possible so that fire personnel can not only efficiently do their job and provide service to their community but have a safe space to live and work,” said Christie Jewett. “The exterior of the building fits well in the area and stands out as a civic structure, and we also wanted to make sure that it was durable and designed to last fifty-plus years.”
The entire COAR team is honored to be involved with this project, especially with the new fire station being situated close to our Santa Rosa office.
“We know how important this project is to the residents who live there, but this rebuild also speaks to the resiliency of the City of Santa Rosa in general as they rebuild from the devastation of the fires,” said COAR President and Sonoma County Local, Jeff Katz. “Since we opened our office in Santa Rosa in 2020, we’ve been looking for opportunities to work on projects in the community, so we’re really excited to be part of this design-build team.”
Wright Contracting, General Contractor for the project, is also a Santa Rosa-based firm. They are excited to bring this project to life for the Santa Rosa community.
“Being part of this project is incredibly meaningful to us here at Wright Contracting,” said Lisa Freedman, Director of Project Development at Wright Contracting. “Not only did members of our team live and lose homes in the Fountaingrove area during the Tubbs fire, which creates a very intimate connection, but our company has been involved in building Santa Rosa since 1953. Many of our projects have gone on to become the fabric of our city - schools, hospitals, public facilities and more. This project feels like one of those – critically important to our community and created to endure. We are so very proud to be working on this project with COAR Design Group and the City of Santa Rosa to design and build the new fire station that our community needs and deserves.”
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