Christmas is coming early for the Norfolk Volunteer Fire Department. An official groundbreaking ceremony for its new fire house is scheduled for this Saturday and site work has already begun.
The public is invited to attend the 2:00 p.m. groundbreaking. If the weather is too cold, the ceremony will be moved inside the old firehouse.
The moment will be the culmination of years of work by town officials, firefighters and a capital campaign committee. The new facility, which will sit on the same lot as the current structure, is expected take just over a year to complete, with a projected finish date of December 21, 2026. It will cost $9.3 million, with another $1.1 million designated for soft costs such as insurance, contingencies and the like. Town officials and the capital campaign committee continue to seek additional funds to help reduce the tax burden.
First Selectman Henry Tirrell said he spent his first week in office completing paperwork for the project. The town has received its bond anticipation note and is looking into investing it in a state-run short-term investment program.
“We have a good amount of money on hand, so we don’t need to use it right away,” he said. “If we invest it, we may make enough money off of it to pay some of the interest.”
Tirrell is also filing paperwork to secure the $3.25 million in grants promised by the state and federal governments. At the local level, the capital campaign committee headed by Tony Kiser and Barry Roseman continues its efforts to raise funds and is collecting the roughly $3 million that has been pledged.
The move to build a new facility is necessitated by the increasing space demands of a modern fire department. The current firehouse is 50 years old and has become increasingly cramped as the size and amount of firefighting apparatus has increased. The new 10,100-square-foot structure is nearly triple its 3,700 square feet and will provide space to house the six primary firefighting vehicles while supporting ancillary uses such as administration, dispatch and training, and adding better ventilation and a proper kitchen.
The old firehouse will be torn down when the company is settled in its new quarters.