City officials broke ground Wednesday morning on Fire Station No. 3, the latest of the GO Bond propositions to make progress. The new station will replace the old one, located at 10 E. Murphy, just east of South Main.
The original Station No. 3 was built in the 1970s, by actual Sapulpa firefighters. One of whom, Dean Wise, was at the groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday. Fire Chief David Taylor pointed him out and said “Dean Wise was my first captain. I’m glad he’s able to be here today to see this happen.” Wise now works for the Creek County Sheriff’s Office.
Taylor said he was encouraged by the bond issue’s support when it went up for a vote in early 2020. “There were a lot of positive things happening with this bond, and I was very pleased to see the level of positivity that went with it. Sapulpa is growing in a great direction because of it.”
Mayor Craig Henderson echoed Taylor’s statement. “It really speaks to how committed the people are to their fire departments. Really great to see.”
City Councilor Lou Martin was one of those to help break ground with a golden shovel on Wednesday morning and said that though they knew a new station was coming, they weren’t settled on the location at first. “We were looking in the area, trying to find a piece of property that we could purchase that would allow us to build a one-story facility, but there wasn’t any large enough that anyone was willing to sell for a reasonable price.”
That moved the City to plan for a 2-story building on the same piece of land, with a new angle to make it easier to pull the trucks in and out. The second story would be living accommodations and a recreation room and bunks for the firefighters.
Taylor said that some pieces of the old building will be incorporated into the new facility. “There is some wood in the ceiling of the existing building that we’re going to reuse. There are about three places in the new building that we’re going to make use of that wood,” he said.
Officials say that work to demo the old building could begin as soon as next week and that they expect the new building to be completed by mid to late summer of 2022.
