Services out of Fire Station 104, which closed Monday, will be temporarily relocated to Fire Station 150 while a permanent Sheriff’s Station is built in the same spot, officials said Monday.
Fire Station No. 104 will get a new permanent home on Golden Valley Road and Newhall Ranch Road, down the road from the old one. It is slated for completion in the fourth quarter of 2019, said Anderson Mackey, assistant fire chief for the district.
The new Fire Station 104 location is slated to begin construction in June 2018. The old station location was at 26201 Golden Valley Road.
Fire Station 150 is located at 19190 Golden Valley Road, which is why it was chosen as the closest permanent station with the room and resources to temporarily hold firefighters from No. 104, Mackey said.
Mackey said response times for Fire Station 104’s jurisdiction will be impacted slightly, but will still fall within the response time standards mandated by the National Fire Protection Association.
“(Fire Station No. 104) apparatus will still be responsible for that location,” Mackey said. “The response times won’t be as fast, but they’ll still be able to respond within the 5-minute allotted time as per the National Fire Protection Association. In our maps that we have in our response matrix, they will still be able to reach the majority of their area within the 5 minutes.”
Response times can be impacted by many variables beyond the location of the fire incident, as each station has different specialties, said county spokesman Tony Bell.
“Supervisor (Kathryn) Barger’s office has overseen the addition of new fire stations in the Santa Clarita Valley, and will continue to do so with the installation of the new permanent fire station 104 next year,” he said. “We are looking forward to improved and enhanced services with this new fire service station in 2019. We have full confidence in the fire station’s ability to maximize responses and effectiveness.”
Fire officials initially planned to have the fire station ready in “in early 2019,” according to a 2016 report in The Signal.
Firefighters from 104 will also be conducting more fire inspections of buildings and residences in that area, Mackey said. Neighboring district stations will also respond if they are closer to the area, even if it is not within their jurisdiction.
The new fire facility on Golden Valley Road is estimated to cost around $18 million. The new building will be bigger and able to accommodate as many as seven firefighters, if the city’s growth eventually demands that that many be deployed. Fire officials said initially the new facility would be manned with the same number of firefighters as the current station – four.
Construction for the new sheriff’s station is slated to be completed in 2020, in accordance with the City of Santa Clarita’s 2020 plan. The groundbreaking for the new station will be in July 2018, said city spokeswoman Carrie Lujan.
The Sheriff’s Station will become a 44,400-square-foot facility with a 4,000-square-foot vehicle maintenance facility and helipad. It replaces the facility constructed in 1972 on Magic Mountain Parkway.
Santa Clarita 2020 is the city’s five-year strategic plan focused on projects to improve the city.
