Dibble Engineering trucks drove up and down Jordan Street around 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 7, using GPS data to find utility sewer and gas lines along the street in preparation for the construction of Sedona Fire District’s Station 4 replacement.
SFD Fire Chief Ed Mezulis stood in the parking lot at 401 Jordan Road, took pictures and spoke with Dibble Engineering and Arizona Public Service electric utility employees.
“I wanted to check on them, make sure they didn’t have any needs or need access” Mezulis said, gesturing to the locked building. It’s about a-third-of-a-mile from the current Station 4. “Sounds like everything’s on the exterior of the building. And then I had some meetings at our current Station 4, so it just worked out [to be here].”
The property abuts Sedona Beer Company and has a parking lot and pavement wrapping around the one-story rectangular building.
“When we built the chapel station, there was a lot of concern,” Mezulis said. “Now people realize that fire station’s pretty good neighbors — not a lot of late nights and … we do little things, like they’re not going to turn on the siren till they get to the corner and things like that, so that we aren’t loud and obnoxious.”
“We are sad that the city has or willremove public parking near our and other Jordan road businesses off 89A, but we think the fire department will be a good neighbor,” wrote Kali Gajewski, owner of the Sedona Beer Company, in an email.
The new SFD land is a much more fire stationfriendly site, Mezulis said.
“Our current facility, there isn’t really a way to build it so that we can drive through the apparatus bay,” Mezulis said. “Right now, our vehicles at the current station have to back in and with the Forest Road traffic, it’s just becoming more and more difficult.”
The city of Sedona negotiated with the SFD Governing Board in last fall to swap its land with another parcel owned by the city. The NEWS reported the city voted to sell SFD the land for $2.3 million on Feb. 11.
The layout of the property is better suited for the fire trucks so they don’t have to back into it or worry about pedestrian traffic and it’s also built on land previously part of the Jordan apple orchard, so the ground beneath isn’t solid rock like the old station, which brings down construction costs.
“Station 4 proper, on Forest Road, was built in 1972 and then had a series of remodels over the years,” Mezulis said. “Once [it] served as the dispatch center for this part of Arizona and has had a bunch of different uses. In 1996, we started noticing some engineering stuff and some needs to get it replaced, and then we’ve attempted to replace it numerous times.
“We were saving funds in the mid 2000s and then the recession hit, and then those funds went away. And then in 2016, we attempted a bond, and then that failed. … We had contractors look at the property at Station 4, and it’s just not well-suited to build a modern fire station.”
Mezulis said SFD submitted all the permit applications for the utilities and to APS and is hopeful everything will get approved without too much trouble.
“Then we’ll start demolition of this building, and then the fence will go up around the property,” Mezulis said. “From there, once we land on plans, then get the exterior design and everything right for the Uptown Character Area. [Once] those plans are stamped, then they’ll go to the city for approval and then from there, it’s just time and materials to get construction going.”
Mezulis said once construction begins — which he’s hoping for late spring or early summer — it should take about 12 to 18 months to finish, depending on permitting and supply chain.
It will “have a community room for community gatherings,” Mezulis said. “Really just be a really functional station. …It’ll be a 50- to 75-year building for sure.”
