This facility received the Career 2 Notable award in the 2025 Firehouse Station Design Awards. Find the full list of winners here. 

Pasco is one of Washington’s fastest-growing cities. It needed to expand its fire infrastructure to meet increasing service demands. This effort included the development of a flexible prototype facility to accommodate the development of three neighborhood stations and a headquarters station. All four stations, one of which is yet to be built, share a standardized floor plan and materiality and systems to reduce long-term costs, to streamline operations and to support training across the department.

Each building’s exterior is uniquely adapted to complement its surrounding neighborhood.

The prototype design of the facility reflects a comprehensive strategy that’s focused on firefighter health and safety, to emphasize contamination control and transition areas, sleep health and access to the natural environment.

Stations feature three apparatus bays with support areas, individual sleeping rooms, living areas, workrooms, an exercise room, and a private patio that’s accessible from the kitchen and fitness room. Headquarters Fire Station 84 includes additional program elements: an administrative wing, battalion chief bay and sleeping quarters, a logistics building and outdoor training features.

Despite these additions, the operational layout remains identical, reinforcing operational consistency.

A key design challenge was reducing overall square footage while maintaining all operational needs. Strategies included simplifying circulation paths, right-sizing rooms, relocating the mechanical room access to the exterior, incorporating a mechanical mezzanine that’s located above the apparatus bay and repositioning the wash alcove to a location that’s adjacent to the turnout gear entry.

The design team worked closely with the city to provide extensive site studies and land purchase strategies to identify feasible locations. Station 83 was compressed to fit on city-owned land. (Headquarters Fire Station 84 was pushed to the property line to preserve adjacent greenfield space, which allowed the city to resell more than half of the parcel. Station 85 features a rooftop solar array that reduces annual electrical costs by almost 40 percent.)

Station 83 is foundational to the family of stations and reflects a highly coordinated, efficient and forward-thinking approach to fire service facility designs that support operational needs while responding to the city’s growth, management of operational costs and community context. “Great looking project,” one Station Design Awards judge said. “Strong, clear identity,” another remarked.

Architect: TCA Architecture + Planning + Design