This station received the Shared Facilities Silver Award in Firehouse's 2015 Station Design Awards. Find the full list of winners here.
The new Public Safety Facility in Conway showcases the region’s "low-country" style and character, while giving the city a state-of-the-art fire and police complex. Additionally, site considerations were paramount to the design of this Public Safety Facility. Great care was taken to preserve the heavily wooded lot of old-growth live oak trees, including designing the facility to wrap around and showcase these beautiful trees.
The new two story structure houses the police department headquarters on the second floor, and the fire department headquarters on the first floor. Combining the two departments into a single facility allows for a joint use of common areas such as training rooms, conference rooms, day room, physical fitness area, and communications. Additionally, the shared facility utilizes a joint public entrance and lobby. The design helped the city to save a considerable amount of money and space over having two separate facilities. This fire department houses five truck bays with a work shop and a mezzanine for equipment storage.
The city owned a large and beautiful site that was the home of a dilapidated hospital that needed to be demolished to make way for the Public Safety Facility. The site also contained a large number of old growth live oak trees that would need to be preserved. During the design process it was decided that the new structure would need to closely mirror the L-shape of the original hospital in order to preserve the natural beauty of the site.
The building design is representative of the low country style and character. Due to its coastal location, the structure is designed to withstand 130-plus mph winds and has impact resistant glazing and hardened exterior walls to resist damage by hurricanes. The elevation of the site was raised to prevent the possibility of flooding.
Architect: Stewart Cooper Newell Architects
