June 5—CHEYENNE — Cheyenne Fire Rescue is seeking $836,325 from the City Council to purchase approximately 2.74 acres of empty land on the northeast corner of Powderhouse Road and East Carlson for future construction of a new fire station.
John Kopper, the city’s fire chief, presented the request at a meeting of the council’s finance committee Monday afternoon. The sales contract between the City of Cheyenne and Section 20 LLC was on third reading, meaning it requires an additional vote by the full City Council, which will likely happen next week.
The land is earmarked for the future relocation of the current fire company to Western Hills Boulevard and Moccasin Avenue, across from McCormick High School.
Kopper said officials evaluated historical response data, GIS data, miles traveled and distance from other fire stations. Their findings showed the potential new location would help reduce response times in the area and increase overlap capacity within other fire stations.
“As the city grows and develops, the city becomes more and more remote,” Kopper said. “So the fire station was built in the 1980s, which is over 40 years ago. So you can imagine all the development and how the town has expanded and grown… the times response times became longer and we went further.” and further from other fire stations.
Mayor Patrick Collins said the city recently built three new fire stations and as part of that process learned where future fire stations should be located so the building would be within a radius of ideal intervention. Collins said the goal is to be able to reach people in the direct target area within four minutes.
“Let’s say there’s a fire in the house,” Collins said. “We need 16 firefighters to fight a house fire, but we only have three or four firefighters at a station. Other fire stations would have to come in and support, so we want to make sure we place them in ideal positions to not only make the four-minute response for everyone in their target area, but also be able to support other fire stations.
The problem, however, is that these areas are often purchased and built on before Cheyenne Fire Rescue (CFR) can access them, so it becomes increasingly difficult to find open land. Kopper said the CFR needs a minimum of two acres to build a fire station, which is difficult to find within city limits. So he wanted to make sure that the land was purchased in advance and a plan was made so that there would be no difficulty in acquiring the land later.
“What we’ve done is look to the future and ask, ‘Where are our future fire stations? Where will they be?'” Collins said. “Then we’re trying to buy that land now so that in the future when we build the fire stations, we already own that land, and we’re in possession to be able to make that happen.”
Last year, the city purchased 2.5 acres of land on College Drive, west of South Greeley Highway, because with the Sweetgrass development, the Cosmo project and others…
