Skylonda Fire Station No. 58 is a two-story, 13,675 square foot fire station that replaced the original facility built in 1930. The old station building was originally designed to accommodate the fire warden and warden’s family living on premises. The station includes two drive-thru apparatus bays and one back-in apparatus bay and provides sleeping quarters for 13 personnel, a 30-person training room, kitchen and dining room, offices, fitness room, turnout storage and shop area. A two-bay reserve apparatus building is also included. Site improvements for the new station include secured personnel parking, emergency generator, public parking area, and refueling station.

The constrained site and phased construction plan provided a challenge for COAR Design Group to overcome. The building footprint was meticulously designed to maximize interior square footage and functionality, reduce call times, separate building functions, and divide “clean” from “dirty” zones, ultimately improving the flow of the building and health of the fire fighters.

The buildings floorplan was designed to separate three distinctive zones: a dirty zone for contaminated equipment, decontamination zone with heavy-duty washers, and clean zone for the living spaces. Keeping these spaces separated from one another improves the overall health of the firefighters by keeping carcinogens as far removed from the personnel as possible, located opposite of the apparatus bay from the living quarters and office spaces.

The living spaces are divided into living and administrative zones. The first floor houses the administrative office, conference room and community rooms to provide accessibility to the public to meet with fire station personnel or to utilize the training and conference room for community events. The second floor contains the personnel living spaces which provides separation from the more active first floor environment and gives an escape to the personnel to recoup from the demands of their work. Separating these two functions is critical in creating a comfortable work environment that allows for focus on tasks when needed.

Critical to this project’s success is the phasing of construction and provision of temporary facilities on site during construction. Our team worked closely with the stakeholders to ensure fire operations remained fully operational in a safe manner while the new station was built. This project also required processing through CEQA and compliance with the environmental restrictions of the heavily wooded and sloping site.

“These improvements mean that the community’s firefighters will be better rested, better trained, less susceptible to the conditions of the job.” – Jonathan Cox, Deputy Fire Chief, CAL FIRE