For about a decade, fire chief Jim McSwain has said a fifth fire station was needed to keep up with the city’s growth.

On April 7, the Lawrence City Commissioners gave informal approval to build a $5 million station on the southwest corner of 19th Street and Stewart Avenue, on land leased from the Kansas University Endowment Association at $1 a year.

“It’s going to improve the fire-protection system,” McSwain said after the meeting, “which in turn will improve the life safety, property safety of Lawrence citizens.”

Construction also must receive approval from the Douglas County Commission, which will pay a quarter of the costs. But city commissioners called the new station an “immediate need.”

Their decision came at a study session, during which fire officials showed them a video of a room becoming fully engulfed by a devastating fire less than two minutes after the first flame appeared.

“You are among the few who have seen this phenomenon and lived to tell about it,” the video narrator intoned.

McSwain said the video showed the need for Lawrence-Douglas County Fire & Medical to be in position to respond quickly to emergencies. Commissioners agreed.

“I definitely think we need to proceed,” Mayor Mike Rundle said.

The last time a fire station, the fourth, was added in the city was 1982.

“I don’t have to tell you how much the city has grown since then,” McSwain said.

The Lawrence population topped 80,000 in the 2000 census, up about 50 percent from 53,000 in 1980. In the same period, Douglas County population increased by nearly 48 percent, to about 100,000 people.

Construction plans

The city in 1994 created a fire station master plan that envisioned moving two of the four fire stations and building a new one to more efficiently serve the city. Only one part of the plan has been completed: Station No. 2 was moved in 2002 from 1941 Haskell Ave. to 2128 Harper St. The station cost $1.45 million to build.

To complete the plan — and have a good spread of fire stations across the city — the city would move Station No. 4 from 2819 Stonebarn Terrace to Wakarusa Drive north of Clinton Parkway. Commissioners did not discuss that part of the plan April 7.

The new station would include administrative offices, prompting concern from Commissioner Boog Highberger, who wanted to see the offices remain downtown with other government offices. Horizon 2020, the city-county comprehensive plan, calls for government offices to remain downtown.

But other officials said the construction plan would allow consolidation of departmental administrative functions now spread among several buildings.

‘A different beast’

“I think it is important, symbolically, to have our civic functions in the downtown area,” Commissioner David Dunfield said. “But the fire station is a different beast. It’s not a destination point where citizens go.”

McSwain said adding the fifth station would help the department meet the voluntary national standard of responding to 90 percent of calls within four minutes. That, he said, will protect the lives of firefighters.

“The quicker we get to an incident,” McSwain said, “the easier it is for us to control it.”

Nine new firefighters would be hired to staff the station at a startup cost of $373,000 a year. Another $525,000 would go to pay for a new “quint” truck for the facility. Additional trucks and personnel would be distributed from the other stations.