{"id":3524,"date":"2019-10-08T20:04:52","date_gmt":"2019-10-09T00:04:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=3524"},"modified":"2019-10-08T20:05:10","modified_gmt":"2019-10-09T00:05:10","slug":"city-commissioners-approved-a-nearly-2-4-million-for-new-fire-training-grounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2019\/10\/08\/city-commissioners-approved-a-nearly-2-4-million-for-new-fire-training-grounds\/","title":{"rendered":"City commissioners approved a nearly $2.4 million for new fire training grounds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lakeland firefighters are ready to see work begin on their new training grounds as soon as the ink on a new deal has dried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

City commissioners approved a nearly\u00a0$2.4\u00a0million <\/a>contract with Lakeland-based Strickland Construction on Monday to build a new training facility for the Lakeland Fire Department. Assistant Fire Chief Rick Hartzog said he’s excited that the long-awaited project can finally get underway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe plans are drawn up, the architect is completely done,\nand we have the plans in hand,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are ready to go and put shovels in\nthe ground.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hartzog said he expects construction of the\n5,000-square-foot training area, 8,000-square-foot warehouse, burn building and\nnew parking area to begin by the end of the year. It will be built in the\nfootprint of the existing 6-acre site, between Lake Parker and the Tigertown\nbaseball complex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s badly needed because our training center is over 50\nyears old,\u201d he said. \u201cOur classroom is no longer in place because it was no\nlonger usable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fire department’s classroom was demolished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fire department first approached city officials about the\nneed for a new training facility in June 2015. At that time, former Fire Chief\nGary Ballard proposed a new facility estimated to cost\nbetween $3.5 million and $4 million that featured a larger\n10,000-square-foot classroom and more features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to value engineer some of the project to get it in\nunder the amount of funding that was put in place,\u201d Hartzog said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The construction of the new facility was also delayed as the fire department originally sought to have the city purchase a larger 15-acre site to accommodate the growing number of firefighters. The\u00a0$14\u00a0million costs for the desired parcel was considered too steep by the majority of the former commission. A brief but unsuccessful hunt was launched for alternative land that would be larger but less costly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we had more room, it would obviously be better,\u201d Hartzog\nsaid. \u201cBut can we accomplish what we need to do on the current site? Yes, we\ncan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new training facility will instead get two new features, according to Hartzog, including a burn building where it will be able to run live-fire drills for its members and a small warehouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s too incredibly hot in the direct sunlight to do\ntraining,\u201d he said. \u201cWe’ll be able to accomplish more under a roof.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hartzog said the fire department regularly has to factor\ninto consideration Florida’s extreme heat and sudden thunderstorms when\nplanning its mandatory training sessions. Dehydration because of heat is a\nserious threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe don’t want to put our firefighters in harm’s way for a\ntraining session,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hartzog said keeping the department’s training facility\nwithin the city will help keep the department’s Insurance Services Office\nrating, or commonly known as ISO fire score, low. The score is ranked on a\nscale of 1 to 10, with 1 representing the best coverage and 10 meaning no fire\nservice is available in the area. An area’s rating has a direct impact on\nresidents’ homeowner\u2019s insurance and commercial insurance costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur ISO rating of 1 is very important to us and to our\ncommunity,\u201d Hartzog said. \u201cWe can’t have an ISO of 1 without our own training\ncenter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lakeland firefighters are ready to see work begin on their new training grounds as soon as the ink on a new deal has dried. City commissioners approved a nearly\u00a0$2.4\u00a0million contract… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3525,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"14","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}