The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
But hurdles (water) still out there…
By Mark Reaman
A few glitches have slightly slowed down the construction schedule of the new Crested Butte Fire Protection District fire hall north of Crested Butte. While expected to be completed this fall with a move-in date for some time in October, the last stages of the construction are seeing a couple hurdles with some infrastructure. Thus, the project is about a month behind the initial schedule.
The facility was, and still is, planning to get water from a well, but CBFPD chief executive officer Sean Caffrey said two attempts at drilling a well have come up short.
“The site appears to have water. Our first well attempt near the river was close to a good flow rate but not quite the 10 gallons-per-minute they were looking for,” he said. “The second well attempt in the rear courtyard area had decent flow but a layer of fine black sand in that location that was going to make treatment a mess.”
Caffrey said a third well attempt is scheduled to be drilled near the southeast corner of the lot. “The well driller’s rig, however, broke down on its last job so it is in Grand Junction getting fixed for who knows how long,” he explained. “They tell us we’re next in line and we have a fourth location contingency if needed.”
There are also options for either the town of Crested Butte or surface water to serve the facility, but Caffrey said the district is still planning on utilizing a well “as that is the least complicated from a cost and treatment perspective. As such, I’m pretty confident we’ll get what we need when we can get the hole drilled. We hope to have the water issue resolved this month.”
Another hold-up according to Caffrey is the lead time on the sewer lift station equipment. Sewer treatment is being provided by Crested Butte. Caffrey said both utility issues are currently question marks in the schedule.
According to the CBFPD website, as of August 3, five of the eight iconic red overhead doors have been installed—these prominent features will serve as the architectural focal point of the building, as is typical for most fire stations. Solar panels are in place, and the district anticipates permanent electrical and telecommunications systems will be activated in the coming weeks. The training building that will be built on the campus should start going up soon.
“Training building materials are on-site,” Caffrey said. “We had to do a bunch of work with the architects and civil engineers to get the plan correct and file for the building permit. Once the permit is released, we will be full steam ahead on that, however, that building may take until November.” One factor on that front is the complexity of installing the specialized propane burn props.
As for budget, Caffrey said so far, so good. “The budget is tracking well; however, we are planning to utilize most of the $2.5 million contingency that was built into the project,” he said. “The good news is $1.2 million of the contingency use was the addition of the training building.”
Overall, Caffrey said things are looking good with the new safety campus. “There are hundreds of hiccups including stair treads, lightning protection, exterior concrete slab connections, window frames and lift station controls on backorder,” he stated. “On the whole, however, we have been working through them effectively and we are very pleased with the great work of our owner’s rep, Todd Goulding, and our general contractor FCI Constructors. We couldn’t have gotten this far without them.”
Caffrey concluded that as construction wraps up, the district looks forward to directing up to $1.2 million in remaining funding toward off-site member housing efforts.
