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Putting out fires As fire district tries to find new home, challenges arise with sites by Jonathan Romeo
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n what could be one of the most monumental changes to Durango in years, plans are in motion to establish a massive, new emergency services center in the middle of downtown. For years, the Durango Fire Protection District (DFPD) has searched for a permanent location to serve the downtown area, with its current facilities near the Powerhouse Science Center out of date and in disrepair. The property itself is owned by the City of Durango, which may have its own plans for future development at that location. Over the summer, in a sudden and shocking move, DFPD announced plans to purchase the 9-R Administration Building on E. 12th Street, next to Buckley Park, for its new headquarters. Soon after, the fire district floated a lofty vision of inviting the Durango Police Department (also in search of a new location) to create a new facility that would be a cornerstone of downtown, where the majority of the district’s 2,000 calls a year take place. Those plans, however, have not been without detractors who say relocating to the 9-R building would be a disaster, pointing to the already congested traffic in the tight area that would increase response times to emergencies. And, opponents of the plan say, the new center would have a disastrous effect on Buckley Park, the only green space downtown that hosts festivals throughout the year. Over the past couple weeks, these tensions have surfaced at City Council meetings from members of the public who say the logical choice is to rebuild a new fire station at its current location near River City Hall. And, from the onset, there’s been a great deal of confusion from the public and even city councilors on the basic facts of DFPD’s proposed plan. In a joint meeting between DFPD and the City of Durango last week, Chief Hal Doughty attempted to clear the air, but opponents are still fighting the project. “9-R is our site,” said Doughty, who became chief in 2015. “Sure there’s challenges, but there’s challenges at every site we look at.” ‘What do we do now?’ The organization now known as Durango Fire Protection District moved into the River City Hall location in 1983, which at the time was seen as a temporary fix while a more permanent spot was secured. (A conglomerate of fire districts came together in 2002, forming DFPD as a separate entity from the City). But, once the fire department was settled in, the effort to relocate lost momentum. “Looking back now, it would have been wiser to have that rise up on the list of things we needed to do,” Bob Ledger, who retired in 2017 after 24 years as city man-
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Durango Fire Protection District’s station on Camino del Rio is out of date and cramped, there’s no doubt about that. But for years, finding a permanent location has been a wild goose chase for properties around town./ Photo by Jonathan Romeo ager, said. “But it didn’t take on a life of its own in those days like it has now.” Over the years, major issues have surfaced at River City Hall. For one, the fire station itself doesn’t meet fire codes. Recently, water started leaking through the roof and into the building. And whereas the fire department used to have three to five people on duty, usually all men, the station is now staffed with a minimum of eight people, both men and women, with the bunkrooms too small to house everyone safely. “There’s more room in a cell at the La Plata County Jail,” Doughty said. “It is absolutely jam packed.” About five years ago, Doughty picked up the effort to find a permanent fire station, evaluating 32 sites around town – some City owned, some private. The two biggest obstacles, Doughty said, were finding sites big enough to house all the department’s needs, as well as properties actually for sale. The most viable site that emerged was on the corner of Camino del Rio and College Drive, which now serves as the parking lot for the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad and is City-owned. DFPD invested $40,000 to conduct evaluations and analyses of the site, but the plan was
derailed when the idea of a convention center took priority. “Which was incredibly disappointing,” Doughty said. Doughty then scheduled a meeting with then-City Manager Ron LeBlanc. The two started formulating plans to make DFPD’s current location at River City Hall work, which included relocating city staff. Despite all the challenges, Doughty said the plan started to grow legs. But then, in April 2019, two new city councilors were elected – Kim Baxter and Barbara Noseworthy. Five months later, after differences with LeBlanc, City Council abruptly terminated his contract in September 2019, and plans for the fire station fell by the wayside. “It just became clearer and clearer that the favor of the council was that River City Hall should not be a fire station,” Doughy said. Who said what? Here’s where the confusion sets in. Baxter and Noseworthy, for their part, are adamant they did not oppose any plans to keep DFPD at River City Hall, arguing they were never even given a complete and full rundown of the situation. But Doughty maintains it was his sense the City had
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other plans for the river-front property, whether as the site of the Camino underpass or future high-end development. And it’s not like River City Hall is not without its own complications. For one, the site is located in the 100-year flood plain, making grant funding more difficult to secure. Above all, old uranium tailings were used to build the roads in that area decades ago, which could make new construction there incredibly expensive, carrying huge unknowns. (It should be noted the 9-R building has a big asbestos and lead paint problem, too). But to date, there has been no real study on how to mitigate the uranium tailings or the risk it poses to human health. “That’s missing,” Noseworthy said at a council meeting last week. “And it would be needed for any work on that property.” Then, the situation drastically changed when Durango School District 9-R put out to bid this summer its historic administration building at 201 E. 12th St. DFPD, learning of the sale about a week before bidding closed, quickly put together a proposal with the help of an engineer. Doughty admits the process happened fast, with virtually no public knowledge, which has rubbed some people the wrong way.
