FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Chester Fire Services Committee
Acre Architects/S2 Architecture to Design Concept for New Chester Fire Station
November 23, 2023 (Chester, NS) – The Chester Fire Services Committee is pleased to announce the awarding of its Request for Proposals “Conceptual Design and Cost Estimates for New Chester Fire Hall/Station” to Acre Architects of Halifax, NS and Saint John, NB with S2 Architecture of Calgary, Edmonton, AB and Vancouver, BC.
“The Acre Architects/S2 Architecture team is super excited to be part of the Chester Fire Station project!” said Stephen Kopp, Partner. “Acre believes in community, and a community that invests in civic pride and emergency services signals a safe place to live. The Fire Station is a functioning symbol of this commitment to community and our collective team will do our best to help make this a success for Chester and its people. We are what we create.”
Acre are tasked with an engineering site analysis, conceptual design, and preliminary cost estimation for the proposed build. The consultant team has extensive experience in fire station design, including Grand Falls, NB, Salt Spring Island, BC, and Edmonton, AB. Public consultation is an integral part of the project.
The Chester Volunteer Fire Department (CVFD) has outgrown its current home at 149 Central Street and is also looking to further improve access and response time within its service area. The proposed location for the new fire station is one km away at 4070 Highway 3, on the former site of the now-demolished Windjammer Motel. A site review for suitability is part of Acre’s scope of work.
“We the Chester Volunteer Fire Department are very happy to see this project move forward in collaboration with our partners, the Municipality of the District of Chester and the Village of Chester,” said CVFD Fire Chief Cody Stevens. “We look forward to the future success of this partnership. We look forward to working with Acre in building a new, safer environment for the CVFD to protect themselves from the cancer-causing elements we face during our duties in protecting our community. ‘We hold thee safe.’”
The Chair of the Chester Fire Services Committee, Colin MacDonald, said: “This is a great step forward in providing our community heroes, the volunteers at the CVFD, with a facility that not only stores their firefighting equipment properly and securely but even more importantly provides these courageous women and men with a facility to protect their health through proper cleaning and recovery from responding to the community’s emergencies. This is paramount to the long-term health of our volunteers. This new station will make a huge statement to these women and men that they are indeed respected. They deserve no less.”
The new building is also expected to include accessible public meeting space. A plan for public consultation will be released early in the new year.
Updates will be posted to the Village of Chester website here, where further information is also available: https://villageofchesterns.ca/news/fire-department/
Background:
- The Chester Fire Services Committee is an incorporated body, jointly owned by the Village of Chester and the Municipality of the District of Chester, to provide fire and emergency services via the Chester Volunteer Fire Department in Districts 3, 7, and part of 1.
- See attached map of the CVFD service area.
- A frequently-asked-questions document is available here: https://villageofchesterns.ca/studies-and-reports/1190-firehall-faqs-jan-13-2021/file.html
For more information:
Heather McCallum
Clerk/Treasurer
Village of Chester
902-275-4994
heather.mccallum@villageofchesterns.ca
