Joan Lynch
The Tribune (San Luis Obispo, Calif.)
(TNS)
Oct. 11—Paso Robles Fire and Emergency Services is getting a new home for its training operations on Union Road.
The Union Road Fire Training Facility — a master planned development for the fire department — has been in the works since 2021, and recently saw the completion of Fire Station No. 3 at the corner of Ardmore Road and Union Road.
At Tuesday’s Planning Commission meeting, the other half of the development was unanimously approved 6-0.
The project will include overall frontage improvements and will call for the construction of two buildings behind Fire Station No. 3: a 3,600 square-foot training building and a 43-foot-tall training tower structure.
Paso Robles Fire and Emergency Services deputy chief Randy Harris said the training facility is badly needed for a growing city.
“The needs for this are huge — we do not have a local academy,” Harris said. “Our closest academy to the north is in Monterey, and our closest academy to the south is in Lompoc, so when we look at the regional aspect of this, we’re looking at partnering with Cuesta College and actually having a local academy where we can have youth kind of come up from high school to college and hopefully be able to get their public safety credentials — both police and fire — locally.”
What will new training facility look like?
The area surrounding Fire Station No. 3 was originally supposed to be a police substation, but was reorganized to be a corporation yard at an August Planning Commission meeting, according to the staff report.
The new training buildings will host state-required training that the fire department’s current facilities are not capable of supporting — a gap that earned the department a zero out of 35 by the Insurance Service Office, according to the staff report.
The training building will match the existing fire station’s appearance and will sit behind the main building, bordering some of the open storage space.
The training tower is a different story. The tower will be constructed from stacked sea train containers, which can be replaced if individual units are damaged during live fire training exercises, according to the staff report.
“The overall scope of a fire training facility usually focuses on the tower and that’s because that’s such a unique material and property that has to hold up to fire over time,” Harris said. “It used to be you’d build these giant concrete structures, and over the years of setting them on fire, the concrete actually starts to spall and starts to lose strength.”
Stacked four-and-a-half units high, the containers would also feature shingled roofs and a range of interiors and points of entry, allowing firefighters to practice different types of rescues, Harris said.
Each container will be modified to resemble a dwelling before being shipped to the site and stacked, allowing for changes and improvements over time.
Both of the new structures will be used by the fire department and Paso Robles Police Department for training, Harris said.
How long will construction take?
According to the city’s 2024-25 budget, the tower and training building will cost around $5 million, drawing its funding from Measure J-20.
Construction is expected to end by 2027, according to the budget.
According to the budget, a potential Phase III of the development could introduce new permanent living quarters along the east side of the station, though designs won’t be completed until the 2026-27 fiscal year at the earliest.
“This project is decades in the making for our training grounds,” Harris said. “What is unique on this project is that it’s not just a fire training facility, but it’s a public safety training facility, including the police department as well. With that said, it’s not only going to serve the citizens of Paso Robles, but we have eyes on it being a regional facility, and that’s such a key concept because there is nothing like this that exists on the Central Coast.”
___
(c)2024 The Tribune (San Luis Obispo, Calif.)
Visit The Tribune (San Luis Obispo, Calif.) at www.sanluisobispo.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
