Future Plans for Town of Apex Fire Department downtown.
Station 1 is located in the middle of Downtown Apex. It was volunteer built across several years starting in the 50s, and has served as the cornerstone of historic Apex ever since.
Today, we only use one of the seven bays – the rest are too small to hold a modern fire truck. There are also no “plans” for it, exactly… and it’s not up to “code” per se.
So a few years ago (I think this was 2018? early 2019?) the Town Council was faced with a decision. Do we renovate (option 1)? Demolish and build a new fire station in it’s place (option 2)? Or do we demolish, and construct an alternative building there and move the fire station itself to somewhere else (option 3)?
The Fire Chief at the time recommended #3. The Town Council chose Option #2, listening to public feedback desiring a strong AFD presence in the middle of downtown.
That was a few years ago. We now have a new fire chief, and a new town council.
The new Fire Chief, like the previous, again recommended option #3. The primary reason: It turns out a narrow, busy street isn’t the ideal location to station a fire truck. If someone illegal parks across the street, they can’t pull out. If downtown is busy, and there is a call, we have a serious problem (this happened during the Christmas lighting). The recommendation was to put the fire truck itself at Station 3, which is just a few blocks away at Hunter St, and build an administration building where the current fire station is.
We agreed.
The new fire station, in the chief’s vision, will be a a multipurpose building. It will look like an active fire station with an engine (roll up doors, etc), but the bottom floor will more be a hands on educational experience for the public (and especially the kids). Think Marbles, but for Fire safety specifically. AFD will maintain their strong public presence downtown to interact with the public, but the actual fire engine will be relocated to Station 3, which itself will be renovated and updated.
That’s the big news. I’ll add some pictures from the Chief’s vision presentation, but keep in mind these are concepts: we’d get design firms etc in to actually implement the vision. The station 3 renovations would happen first.
Full presentation is here: https://meetings.municode.com/d/f?u=https://mccmeetings.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/apexnc-pubu/MEET-Packet-2661737d505442bd92a22941eb22ca2d.pdf&n=AgendaPacket-Town%20Council%20Retreat%20Day%20Two-February%2016,%202024%208.30%20AM.pdf
VISION OF THE PEAK 