The Aurora City Council next week is set to consider a new $35 million fire department headquarters building that would also include a relocated Fire Station 4.
The new fire station and headquarters building would be located on the site of the current Aurora Police Department headquarters, which is located on Indian Trail, to create a combined Aurora Public Safety Campus.
Aurora Fire Department officials have said this move would improve the department’s operations in multiple ways, including lower fire and emergency medical response times, much-needed expanded office space for department administration and a new storm-hardened, high-tech Emergency Operations Center.
The Aurora City Council’s Building, Zoning and Economic Development Committee previously approved resolutions establishing a public safety campus subdivision and setting a plan for the site.
Now, two more resolutions related to the project are set to go before the City Council at its meeting on Tuesday.
One of these resolutions would approve the $29.5 million construction of the new Aurora Fire Department headquarters and another would roughly double the dollar amount of a contract with Cordogan Clark of Aurora for architectural, design, engineering and construction services to a total cost of around $2.2 million.
Aldermen have already discussed the two items at length. The proposed new Aurora Fire Department headquarters went before the City Council’s Committee of the Whole on Tuesday, and it previously spent weeks before the Infrastructure and Technology Committee before it was moved along the approval process.
The project is expected to cost the city a total of $34.9 million. Beyond what is included in the two resolutions set to go before the City Council next week, additional costs include the purchase of technology and furniture for the new headquarters as well as utility connections, builders risk insurance and contingencies, according to past reporting.
Cordogan Clark’s contract is proposed to be increased because the amount was negotiated as a percentage of the construction cost, which rose from an original estimation of around $15.5 million to its currently proposed amount, city staff previously said.
The estimated price to construct the project rose because of inflation but also because the project expanded in part because a space for the Aurora Emergency Management Agency was added to the proposed fire department headquarters building, officials have previously said.
According to Ald. Ted Mesiacos, 3rd Ward, the City Council was not consulted about this expansion of the project when it happened. Aldermen only learned about the jump in price when the project came before the Infrastructure and Technology Committee last month, he previously said.
He was the only vote against the two items at the April 21 Infrastructure and Technology Committee meeting. While other aldermen on the committee had a number of questions, they still voted to continue moving the project through the approval process.
Questions from aldermen continued at Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole meeting after a presentation on the project by Fire Chief David McCabe and Aurora Chief Financial Officer Chris Minick.
Many of those questions centered around redesigning the building, which Minick said would set the project back at least several months, potentially up to a year, and would cost the city millions of dollars. The city has already spent $1.2 million on designing the building, he said, and it would cost another $1.7 million to $2 million for a redesign.
If the City Council decides not to move forward with the project at all, it would still cost around $750,000 to break the city’s contracts with the architect and the construction manager, according to Minick.
Currently, the Aurora Fire Department’s administration works out of the Central Fire Station on Broadway in downtown Aurora. That space is now too small for the department’s needs, according to McCabe. He said the front office staff have even given up a breakroom they are contractually obligated to get so the building can have more office space.
Aurora’s Emergency Management Agency, which reports to the fire department, is facing a similar problem at its current location in the Aurora Police Department headquarters building. Emergency Management Coordinator Natalie Wiza said that, if her department is not able to grow, the state may pull its accreditation, which would leave the city at the whims of county emergency management organizations.
If the new fire department headquarters and connected Fire Station 4 are not built, the city would still need around $2 million to update technology for the Emergency Management Agency and complete needed maintenance at the existing Fire Station 4, McCabe said.
If the project is built, the relocated Fire Station 4 would help to reduce response times in that area of the city, according to McCabe. A 2021 study found that response times in that area were higher than other parts of the city, he said, and it recommended moving Fire Station 4 to this location.
Fire Station 9 is also being relocated and a new Fire Station 13 is also currently under construction because of the results of that study. Without the relocation of Fire Station 4, those efforts would simply move the problem to a different part of the city rather than address it directly, McCabe said.
Beyond the obvious reasons for reducing response times, it also has an impact on ISO ratings, which measure a community’s level of fire protection, according to McCabe. This score, which ranges from one as the best and 10 as the worst, impacts insurance rates across the city, he said.
Currently, Aurora has a score of two, McCabe’s presentation showed.
The fire department headquarters building is proposed to be two-story and roughly 29,800 square feet. It is set to have four bays for fire vehicles and three bays for Emergency Management vehicles.
The first floor would hold a lobby, new flexible training rooms, the relocated Fire Station 4 with living space for the firefighters, office space for the Emergency Management Agency and the city’s Emergency Operations Center, which can also function as a storm shelter, according to McCabe.
City staff said this storm-hardened Emergency Operations Center would allow response efforts to continue even during disasters.
The building’s second floor would be devoted to the fire department administrative offices, McCabe said.
Plans for the site also include expanded parking areas, fueling stations for fire trucks and police vehicles and a plaza connecting the existing police headquarters to the proposed fire headquarters building.
Funding for the project would come through general obligation bonds, according to Minick. He said the city needs to take out bonds anyway to fund other planned projects, so adding on the new fire headquarters building will only increase the average taxpayer’s monthly bill by roughly $3.
According to his presentation, the city would either need to take out bonds for $53.9 million without the proposed fire department headquarters or $88.1 million with the headquarters. Over 30 years, that means a yearly city payment of either $3.6 million or $5.9 million, respectively.
So, over 30 years, the monthly impact of the bond sale on a $300,000 property would be either $4.79 without the fire department headquarters or $7.79 with it, a difference of $3.00, Minick’s presentation showed.
These numbers changed from the last time Minick presented them, and he said they may change again as the bond sale is finalized.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
