THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 31, 1996 TAG: 9601310476
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Short : 50 lines
City Manager Steven Harrell said Tuesday he will use his ``fresh eyes'' to search for the elusive solution to the city's fire station problem.
At a meeting that included Rocky Mount-based architect Dan Knight, City Council Public Safety Committee members Anita Hummer and Myrtle Rivers, and Mayor H. Rick Gardner, Harrell said he would review possible downtown locations for a second fire station.
Engineers told the city in 1994 that Fire Station One on Elizabeth Street downtown was unsafe for firefighters. It has been vacant since, and all the city's firefighters have been crammed into a single station on Halstead Boulevard while the City Council has argued about what to do.
Harrell, who started work two weeks ago, met with Knight for the first time Tuesday and asked him to redraw a rough sketch originally drafted for a proposed station at Knobbs Creek Drive at the north end of town.
That site has been all but abandoned in favor of an undetermined downtown site, and Harrell asked for a scaled-back drawing that would reduce the number of beds, bathrooms, dividers and square feet in the building.
The city manager also said he will re-examine the Elizabeth Street site and two parcels the city doesn't own on the western end of Elizabeth Street that the council has proposed, dropped and renewed as possible places to build a second station.
``They've been looked at, they've been ruled out,'' Harrell said after the meeting. ``But I'm looking at them with a fresh set of eyes.
``The objective is to get a fire station built as quickly as we can that everyone can buy into, that everyone is satisfied with.''
Harrell said he hoped to give council members before the Feb. 19 work session an early recommendation about what the building will look like. But that will be tough, he added, if the architects still don't know where the station will go.
``The shape of the building, etc., will be slightly altered, depending on what site the building is at,'' Harrell said.
The building being discussed will cost less than $500,000, city officials said. But they don't know how much less.
Gardner, who late last year argued strenuously for building on the rejected city-owned Knobbs Creek site, declined to comment on the status of fire station plans. He said it's in the hands of the council's Public Safety Committee. by CNB