Bids To Construct Fire Stations Higher

The bid to construct Cookeville’s new Fire Stations 2 and 3 came in about $2 million higher than originally expected.

During a Monday afternoon Work Session, City Manager James Mills told City Council that the bid for both buildings totaled $12.36 million. Mills said there are still changes that could be made to decrease the overall cost.

“We’ll include the not to proceed number, this $12.36 million, with the understanding that there’s, for example if we take out the sprinkling system that’s going to save us $180,000,” Mills said. “$90,000 a building.”

Mills said the total project cost, including land and design, would total $14 million. Mayor Laurin Wheaton said they were hoping to spend around $5 million for each station when planning began a couple years ago.

“I’m encouraged, honestly, that we’re just up to a little over six (million) for each,” Wheaton said.

The council will consider the bid during its Thursday meeting.

Fire Chief Benton Young said a potential sprinkler system could see use in the new stations if an engine were to catch on fire due to the electronics constantly plugged into it.

“If we’re there, we’re going to deal with it, right?” Young said. “It’s not an issue. But if we’re out on a call or whatever happens, if one of those were to catch on fire you’d have significant damage there.”

Young said the stations have a good square foot price compared to other stations around the state and will be much higher quality.

“This is no corrugated metal building,” Mills said. “This is going be a first-class, last fifty years.”

Mills said they will be saving up to several hundred thousand dollars by purchasing two buildings at the same time.

“We bid the two projects as separate projects so that no matter what each one of these numbers were standalone numbers,” Project Manager Michael Driver said. “And each time we asked for a deduct to do both buildings at once and so the number you see here has those deducts in there for getting cost savings for both buildings.”

Driver said they will save $600,000 to $700,000 on the overall project by using HardiPlank instead of aluminum paneling.