The Western Council of Construction Consumers recently announced that Seal Beach is the winner of its Distinguished Project Award for its recently-completed Fire Station 48, at 3131 Beverly Manor Rd. (now North Gate Road).
The city’s project involved replacing an older fire station that was built in the 1960s with a new 12,000 square foot essential facility with living quarters, administrative facilities, class-room training center and apparatus bays.
The facility was designed to complement the “craftsman style” of the surrounding beach community.
“When we first started this process, we knew we needed a new facility and wanted to incorporate some other city emergency capabilities into the new essential facility,” said Seal Beach Mayor David Sloan.
“We wanted to plan a building for the long term. Our team worked cooperatively and delivered the project well ahead of schedule and under budget,” Sloan said.
“We feel we now have a modern essential facility that will serve the city for the next 50 years. We’re honored to have these efforts recognized by the Western Council of Construction Consumers,” Sloan said.
Not everyone agrees with Sloan’s assessment. Councilman Gary Miller has questioned whether the old fire station needed to be replaced.
As recently as Monday, June 14, Miller expressed concern about the cost of paying for the fire station in light of the city’s current finances.
The fire station was formerly housed in what some called an outdated structure that had served the city of Seal Beach for almost 50 years.
The council voted to build a new facility and wanted to incorporate some other city emergency capabilities into the new and much larger essential facility.
“I congratulate the city and its team, especially Andresen Architecture, general contractor AMG & Associates, Inc, and Willdan Engineering, on a job well done,” said Orange County Fire Authority Chief Keith Richter.
Fire Station 48 is a superb facility that will provide multiple uses for the Seal Beach community for decades to come,” Richter said.
The primary goal of this project was to provide the city of Seal Beach with a modern essential facility that would serve the city for the next 50 years and incorporated green energy into the design.
The new 12,000-square-foot facility with a solar array incorporated into the building’s roof tile design the best of old and new.
The new facility is over twice the size of the one it replaced.
The site was deemed too small to house the temporary fire station at the present location for the duration of construction.
The city teamed with the adjacent Leisure World development and constructed a temporary facility they were able to continue to use after the building was completed. Another challenge was the existence of wet clay soil throughout the site.
This was an on-going challenge that needed to be remedied at every step of construction.
The design incorporated lime treatment of the soil prior to any construction that provided the needed compaction to build on.
However, approximately 90 percent of the site needed some treatment to remediate the wet clay soil problem.
According to some officials, the old fire station was outdated and was not equipped to handle the emergency needs of the community as efficiently as needed in a large-scale disaster.
The new facility houses emergency response equipment for police and volunteer organizations that need to coordinate in a major disaster.
This project was selected by the WCCC as a distinguished project not only because it was completed ahead of schedule and considerably under the city’s budget, but it provides the community with a state of the art essential facility that equips Seal Beach fire and police with the tools they need so they are ready to face natural and man-made disasters efficiently and with an immediate response.
Seal Beach Mayor Pro Tem Michael Levitt said: “Fire fighters put their lives on the line for us every day; these are the men and women that run into burning buildings while the rest of us are running out. I’m glad we now have a proper facility to domicile them.”
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