Rising prices, larger footprint drive cost for new Santa Rosa fire station in Fountaingrove area

Santa Rosa is set to pay more than $900 per square foot to build a $21 million Fountaingrove fire station that’s nearly twice as large and further from harm’s way than its $4.6 million predecessor, which burned to the ground in the 2017 Tubbs fire.

The more detailed cost estimate came to light in newly disclosed public records that specify some of the factors behind the soaring price tag for the new firehouse, which the city insists will deliver more for Santa Rosa residents than the old station ever did. It was open for only two years before it burned down, and its estimated cost per square foot was in the high $400s.

The new station’s escalating cost — now estimated at about 350% more than its predecessor — is due in large part to dramatically more expensive building materials and labor costs over the past several years, city officials say.

The price tag also has been inflated by the deliberate choice of City Hall and the fire department to build a much bigger station on a different site that will need millions of dollars in improvements beforehand.

Officials say that move will give Santa Rosa a better firefighting system in the near future and over the long term as more homes are built closer to the center of the city than the former station, which was tucked up in the hills of Fountaingrove. The area is currently being served by a temporary firehouse on Parker Hill Road.

“We need to get some sort of permanent fire station up there,” said Fire Chief Scott Westrope. He touted benefits to both the fire department and the public that a bigger station would bring, but he also acknowledged the sharp increase in cost posed a barrier to making the department’s desired station a reality.

“We're willing to do whatever we need to do to get it done, but we've got to make that cost reasonable, too,” Westrope said. “The cost to build a fire station is just absolutely insane.“

The new station would be located at Fountaingrove Parkway and Stagecoach Road. Including its engine bay, it would be about 10,800 square feet — nearly twice the size of the former 5,500-square-foot station on Newgate Court.

The decision to build bigger has fueled the price increase, as has a steep rise in labor and materials needed to build the fire station the city wants, according to officials. The evolving estimates of late included a sharp jump in price, from roughly $17.3 million as recently as December to the latest figure of $21 million.

The bulk of the costs come from construction, as well as grading, building a parking lot and other site improvements.

Keysight Technologies is selling the 2-acre site to the city for about $200,000, according to a spokesperson for Keysight, which like City Hall is one of the largest employers in Santa Rosa. The deal is still in escrow, according to the spokesperson and city officials.

To design the new station, the city has worked with San Francisco-based Cumming Corp., which Assistant City Manager Jason Nutt said has recent experience on other California fire station projects.

Cumming’s February study estimated the cost of building a 10,763 square-foot station, including a 2,736 square-foot apparatus bay, at just shy of $10 million, or more than $900 per square foot.

Line items big and small make up for those costs, including about $500,000 for concrete, about $225,000 for the elevator and stairs to reach the new stations’s second floor. Smaller items make for costly add-ons, including shower curtain rods, four of them, estimated at $750 each.

Another $5.6 million of “sitework,” including earth-moving and a parking lot, brings the total estimated cost of building the Stagecoach site to $15.6 million. In one place, Cumming’s study includes sitework in the total cost and calculates an overall cost per square foot rises to more than $1,451.

Santa Rosa arrives at its $21 million estimate using a rule of thumb that about a quarter of a project’s total expense is made up of “soft costs,” such as design and environmental work, Nutt said

For comparison, a 2013 study by Santa Rosa-based consulting firm Construction and Development Solutions, Inc., put the 5,500 square-foot Newgate station’s probable construction cost just shy of $2.6 million, or about $470 per square foot. The eventual total cost of the station was $4.6 million, according to Nutt.

Nutt noted that the February estimate from Cumming Corp. only represented the initial stage of the station design. The city hopes to put a full design contract out for bid in the later part of 2021, he said.

“The city will look for another designer to create construction drawings and get more detailed,” Nutt said. “Right now, the detail on that is not something I would build on. It’s very preliminary.“

The Cumming study and the 2013 look at the Newgate Court station project were provided to The Press Democrat as part of a records request submitted to City Hall earlier this year in the wake of the city’s updated cost estimate for the new station. City officials also turned over a set of documents that included the preliminary design and site layout for the new station

The official case for why a bigger station is needed at a different site is laid out in a “qualitative analysis” document authored by Westrope, a 21-year veteran of the fire department who was named its chief on Monday. He’s led the agency since the retirement last year of former chief Tony Gossner.

Westrope’s analysis extols the potential benefits of building according to the city’s current plan: more space for community gatherings and evacuations, additional room for firefighters to stage during dangerous fire weather and better positioning to cover residents in western Fountaingrove, along with the Chanate and Mendocino avenue corridors, where the city expects multiple large housing projects to be built.

In the process, the analysis gives several reasons why the old Newgate Court station was inadequate for the city’s past, present and future needs — and why a much bigger station would be better for the city in the long run.

“The size of the Newgate lot was too small to provide adequate area for defensible space related to a resilient building that is not prone to repetitive damage and its potential use as a temporary evacuation point, community refuge area, or forward command post or staging area,” Westrope said Friday in an email.

The Santa Rosa Fire Department has made the replacement station its top priority during discussions about how the city might use the $95 million in wildfire settlement funds from PG&E. Although the City Council funded some Fire Department programs when it allocated two-thirds of Santa Rosa’s $95 million settlement last month, none of that money went to the new station.

In a 2020 community survey the city conducted about using PG&E funds, a question about using PG&E settlement funds to rebuild Fire Station 5 and damaged roads and sidewalks indicated broad support, with at least 75% of respondents voicing some level of support.

That level of community support “speaks volumes to the council,” said Councilman John Sawyer, the longest tenured member of the City Council, who said he thinks "the need is clear.“

“The reality that things have changed as far as the cost of land and labor and building materials and everything involved in building a fire station,” Sawyer said. “The costs have just gone up exponentially, and that is unfortunate — but it is the reality.“

With about $27 million remaining from the settlement, the council could decide cover the full cost of the fire station — roughly $18.2 million if $2.8 million in insurance proceeds are subtracted from the $21 million estimate — and still have several million dollars left over.

Sawyer said he expects “a very serious conversation” about the fire station and the PG&E settlement funds during the City Council’s upcoming hearings about the 2021-22 budget. He said that it is easy for him as an elected official to draw a direct line between money from a settlement over wildfires and a project to rebuild a fire station destroyed by one such fire.

“It’s hard to argue that that wouldn’t be, on almost every level, a reasonable way to use those funds,” Sawyer said.

After the Newgate Court station burned in the Tubbs fire, the city spent $1 million to put up a temporary fire station on Parker Hill Road — the site of the Newgate station’s predecessor, which also burned down in the same historic blaze.

Santa Rosa would go on to consider about 50 properties in the Fountaingrove area before landing on a 2.1-acre slice of the Keysight campus, Nutt said.

“The property had the best frontage, best access and met the needs of the fire department from a response standpoint, and so that’s why we ultimately entered into negotiation,” Nutt said.

The City Council appears to have first considered the site at Stage Coach Road and Fountaingrove Parkway in a May 2019 closed-session meeting.

The Cumming Corp. study estimates about a year’s worth of construction, starting in January 2023 and concluding in January 2024.

If the City Council decides not to fund Fire Station 5’s replacement with remaining PG&E funds, the Fire Department will look to other financing options, including the creation of a nonprofit to attract and secure grant funding, Westrope said.

Sawyer said he hoped the city didn’t drag its feet when it comes to rebuilding Fire Station 5.

“We need to move as quickly as possible to cover that area that other stations are having to cover now,” Sawyer said. “The sooner we get that new firehouse built, the easier it will be on the public safety organization.”

You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @wsreports.