Allendale Township breaks ground on new fire station

ALLENDALE TWP. — A ceremony to celebrate the start of construction for a new Allendale Township fire station was held Thursday afternoon next to the current fire station and township building.

Construction crews worked on site while Allendale-area officials, firefighters and community members listened to Township Supervisor Adam Elenbaas talk about the project that’s been years in the making.

“We didn’t have to raise any new funds,” she noted. “So we took the existing tax structure and we very carefully planned around that for the past four years to make it a very strategic investment for the community.”

The new 25,000-square-foot fire station at 6676 Lake Michigan Drive was built at a total cost of $6.9 million, Elenbaas said.

In addition to tax dollars funneled through the township budget, Grand Valley State University contributed $1 million and the Allendale Township Downtown Development Authority chipped in $3.5 million.

The new station will be more than triple the size of the current station, with two stories and five bays for fire trucks. The current station is about 7,000 square feet.

More:Construction to begin on new Allendale Township fire station

Subscribe:Get unlimited access to our local coverage

“If you walk in here right now, our trucks are all double parked,” Allendale Fire Chief Mike Keefe said, “so you have to pull a fire truck out to get one out. With the new fire station, we won’t have to do that anymore.”

There will be four full-time firefighters working in the new station, Keefe said. Sleeping quarters will be available upstairs for those working 24-hour shifts.

“We’re going to have a bigger and better, more technology-driven training room for our team,” Keefe said. “Right now, we do not have a training room, because our township’s grown so much and we need the office space.”

With increased space comes efficiency, and that’s overall good news for township residents.

“When our first responders show up, everything’s at their fingertips ready to go, so it improves our response times, improves the equipment available and overall is a benefit to our community members,” Elenbaas said.

Construction of the new fire station is set to be completed by late December, Keefe said. The township has not yet determined what will be done with the current fire station.

“We’re looking forward to moving in,” Keefe said.