While the City of Sikeston won’t have a new fire station anytime soon, plans for the new building are moving ahead quickly.

The city has purchased a piece of ground on East Malone, between Merrick’s and Burger King to build the fire station and Sikeston City Council selected Dille Pollard Architecture out of Poplar Bluff as the architects.

In early February, city officials met with Dille Pollard to ask questions and answer questions. DPS officials gave them a sketch of what they imagined and what the needs would be. Things like how many people will be housed there, what kind of training facilities are needed, what kind of space, how many bays to store fire apparatus, how much other equipment storage is needed what kind of public access does the building need, what kind of parking and just general preferences about what the building will look like.

“The architect is working on refining that layout and adding the architectural details to it,” said Sikeston City Manager Jonathan Douglass, adding officials want to make sure the fire station is in a prominent spot and looks nice in the area.

“We want it to be a nice addition to that neighborhood,” Douglass said.

At the March 6 City Council meeting, Council will be asked to authorize the city to release a request for qualifications for a construction management firm and then they will work alongside the city and Dille Pollard to finalize the design of the building.

The firm will also estimate construction costs, discuss options with the city as far as square footage of the building, materials to be used, architectural style and how everything impacts the bottom line.

After a construction management firm is chosen, which could take a couple of months, it will take about six months or so for the design of the building. Then the construction management firm will go get all the bids for the subcontractors to build the building.

Once the subcontractors are chosen, the construction project will take approximately a year.

Douglass said the rest of the process could take maybe two years.

“Some of that is hoping for the best in terms of availability of people to do the work,” Douglass said.

The need for the new fire station has been growing which has helped city officials plan for the cost of the new structure.

“What we’ve been doing for the last couple of years is essentially budgeting an annual payment and setting that aside,” Douglass said. “We created a special fund for that, so we’ve been setting aside a little bit of money.”

Douglass said they have transferred $500,000 into the fund and have built the city’s budget around being able to afford an annual payment.

“We will have to finance (the new fire station),” Douglass said. “We don’t know exactly how much that is going to be. Like any other kind of financing, depending how much it is we’ll decide the shortest term we can realistically pay it off in that’s responsible.”

During the Feb. 27 meeting, City Council approved allocating the funds from the proposed 3% sales tax on adult use marijuana sold in the city to help pay for the fire station. Sikeston voters will go to the polls April 4 to vote on the measure and if approved, all money from the tax would go toward the payment of the fire station for the life of the financing.

The new fire station will replace Fire Station 2 located on North Main Street. The current Fire Station 2 has two major issues, leading to the need for the new structure.

The first is structural issues, with major concerns about the ability of the roof to withstand a significant earthquake without falling in as well as the front wall of the building.

Inside the building there are vertical cracks on the side walls near the front of the building and outside there are cracks where the bricks are separating. It also appears the front wall is tilting out towards the street.

The second major problem is flooding, something that has plagued the building for quite some time. During heavy rains, DPS officers will open the bay doors and let water flow through from Main Street through the fire station and out the back and down the hill.

Groundwater is also an issue and with any significant rainstorm as the water table rises the living quarters toward the back of the fire station takes on water. (March 1, 2023)