BRUNSWICK — Brunswick’s central fire station turns 100 this year, and while the department has kept pace with the changes and advancements required by a modern era, the station itself has not.

“It’s antiquated,” Chief Kenneth Brillant said Thursday. “It’s time.”

When officials brought plans for a new station to the town council in September, many balked at the $13 million price tag, $4 million over budget.

“I certainly cannot and will not disagree that we need a new central station, and I was uncomfortable with the $9 million price tag,” Councilor Steve Walker said at the time. “When I saw $13 million — no. I would never support that.”

Now, trimmed down by about $2 million, Brillant is hopeful that the council might be more supportive of the new price tag when the project comes before them in the next few weeks.

Talks around building a new fire station have been going on since the 1970s when some of the station’s more glaring issues like a lack of sprinkler system, leaking floors and bays built for horse-drawn fire fighting equipment started to show.

“We kept being told that it wasn’t the right time,” he said.

Since then, things have only gotten worse. The trucks have to be customized to fit through the doors and even then they have to take off the mirrors, cut them shorter and then reattach them. There is almost no storage and the living quarters and office spaces are in some cases, one in the same. The building is not handicapped accessible or code compliant, and trying to run wiring through the building or update systems is nothing short of a nightmare — to get anything done, another three things need to be done after it.

“Every time you turn around there’s another ripple,” Brillant said.

The station houses five bays with room for eight vehicles and is located at Town Hall Place, in the heart of Brunswick’s downtown, but it can also be hard to access, especially when the road is blocked by large trucks making deliveries.

Town manager John Eldridge told The Times Record in September that all the properties under consideration for a potential fire station, including a preferred site, are along Pleasant Street.

This would make response times faster, Brillant said, and give the firefighters easy access to both the older, downtown section of town, Cooks Corner, Mere Point and the highway.

Last year the department made 4,600 runs, responding to 3,379 calls for emergency medical services and 1,271 calls for fires.

The tower truck purchased in 2006 has to be housed at the newer Emerson Station in east Brunswick, resulting in “a ton of mileage and wear and tear,” Brillant said.

Currently operating at fewer than 10,000 square feet, the proposed station would nearly triple the available space.

One of the updates Brillant is most looking forward to isn’t so much related to having more storage space or taller trucks (which can hold more water), but for the safety of his firefighters.

“Cancer is a huge risk in fire stations, and we’re doing what we can to stop it spreading,” he said.

According to the proposed plan, the new station would have a “hot zone” where gear exposed to harmful chemicals would be taken off to be cleaned, a warm zone further away where there would be less risk, and then the living, admin and other common use areas would be designated contaminate-free “cool zones.”

Not all the $2 million cuts were easy to make, Brillant said. He had to go down one bay, make the training room smaller, cut an area that was supposed to display some of that 100-year-old station’s antiques, and cut back on some of the bunk space.

It is unclear exactly when the new proposal will come before the town council, and how long it might be before anything is built, but the fire department will continue to make do until then.

“This is critical infrastructure for our town,” he said, adding, “we are open 24 hours a day, seven days per week, no matter the weather … we have to be functional.”

hlaclaire@timesrecord.com

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