Beaufort County Council has approved the construction of a new fire station and an emergency operations center for the Bluffton Township Fire District for a projected cost of nearly $3.5 million, according to the fire district.
The buildings will be along Hampton Lake Road about an eighth of a mile from the intersection of Bluffton Parkway and Hampton Parkway on a three-acre property owned by the fire district, according to county documents. The fire station portion will be known as Station 38.
The property is located adjacent to River Ridge Academy. Once built, Station 38 will serve neighborhoods and businesses including Sun City, Lawton Station, Hampton Lake, Buckwalter Place, Sandy Pointe, Shell Hall, Hampton Hall, The Farm, Pine Ridge and Pine Crest.
Station 38 also will be the primary responding unit for the Buckwalter school complex in addition to River Ridge Academy.
The station’s location should improve emergency response times, Fire District Spokesman Lee Levesque said.
Currently, firefighters take approximately 6 to 6 1/2 minutes to respond to the schools in the area. The construction of Station 38 cuts that time down to an estimated 4 1/2 minutes, Levesque said.
“We are excited about the project,” Levesque said. “That station is needed due to the growth out in the Hampton Lake area.”
According to Chief John Thompson, the construction bid was awarded to Fraser Construction. Building the new station and the EOC at the same time will save taxpayers around $108,000, he said.
The EOC will be used as a command center of sorts for large-scale emergencies including hurricanes, Thompson said. The 2,500-square-foot building is located on higher ground in case of flooding or storm surges and will house 12-15 cots, a coffee station, a conference room and computer terminals for firefighters to receive information from the county and community.
“On day-to-day operations, we don’t need anything this advanced,” Thompson said. “We typically command from the back of the battalion chief’s vehicle. But when you get something that is going to be a sustained event, we need someplace better than what we have.”
The project is one of three capital improvement projects approved by County Council last October. The approval allowed the fire district to issue $6 million in limited general obligation bonds to fund the projects, according to county documents.
Two other projects the fire district has in the works are moving its Pritchardville station at the intersection of Gibbet and May River roads to New Riverside Drive and an expansion of its Callawassie station, Levesque said.
A construction date for Station 38 and the EOC has not yet been set as the fire district waits for the project’s contract to be signed. However, Levesque said the hope is for construction to start within the next month.
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