Continued: Edina trailer is firefighters' home as new station is built

There are no fancy signs marking the Edina Fire Department's temporary outpost under an overpass at the public works facility -- just a lonely trailer strung with water and power lines and a grill out front for firefighters to cook their meals.

This is one of the temporary sites from which Fire Chief Marty Scheerer and his force are operating while their primary fire station and department headquarters are rebuilt.

They moved out of Fire Station No. 1 at 6250 Tracy Av. so it could be razed last May, and they'll remain in their temporary quarters until their new building is completed this spring.

This arrangement wasn't anybody's first option.

The fire department could have pushed the city to build a new firehouse on a different site so the old building could remain in use during construction, or they could have opted to remodel rather than build anew.

But Scheerer's staff collectively decided that they liked the quick freeway access at the original fire station, and that the $500-per-square-foot remodeling estimates were outlandish compared to the $160 it would cost to rebuild.

So the deal was sealed.

"They know it's worth the negative aspects they have to go through for what we're going to end up getting out of it," Scheerer said. "They're not the complaining types."

The new $5.7 million station, to be finished in May, will be more than double the size of the old one with 34,000 square feet. And it will feature some amenities that were glaringly absent before - notably, a women's locker room.

Meanwhile, the firefighters affectionately refer to their trailer near the public works facility as "The Depot," with a small sign taped up in the entryway. It's a reference to the railroad tracks that run no more than 20 feet from the shed.

The 3 a.m. trains aren't much of a bother, firefighter Mike Kraegness said, because that's when the firefighters take the bulk of their calls. It's the daytime runs that cut the sleep out of their afternoon down time.

The firefighters take their emergency calls out of the two-bedroom trailer and stash their ambulance and gear in a garage across the way that they share with the city's snowplows, street sweepers and police storage.

For now, they only take emergency medical calls from the trailer, because they had to move their fire truck to a different site so that the plows could get in and out of the garage during snow season.

At $500 a month in rent, "The Depot" is a money-saving solution over the $50,000 temporary structure Scheerer originally proposed to be built in the church parking lot next to the old station. Plus, it was a bit more civilized than the assemble-it-yourself cabin Kraegness suggested they buy from Cabella's outfitters.

"You can endure anything for a year," Kraegness said.

Jammed in

Other than the untimely trains -- and that one occasion when the water pipes froze because the heat was accidentally turned off -- Kraegness doesn't see much to complain about at the "The Depot," especially compared to the sardine-like existence of the crews housed at Edina's other firehouse, Station No. 2.

Tucked away in the southeast corner of the city at 7335 York Av., near the Richfield border, firehouse No. 2 originally was intended to serve the older, densely populated neighborhoods nearby with a couple of firefighters and a truck.

Now, it is a citywide operating base with six additional firefighters crammed into the two-bedroom station, where a workout nook has been converted into sleeping space with bunk beds. Eight firefighters huddle around a kitchen table made for four, exemplifying the crunch, Scheerer said.

Although he approaches his staff's ordeal with a mixture of sympathy and amusement, Scheerer isn't immune to the squeeze himself.

Back at the department's temporary headquarters office in a nondescript warehouse they share with a lawn-care company near the Eden Prairie border, Scheerer deals with space issues of his own.

An administrator joked about the chief's "open-door" policy, pointing to his desk that juts several inches into his office doorway, effectively keeping him from closing the door, even if he wanted to.

Performance hasn't been hurt

The force has managed to maintain its call-response times, and it hasn't yet needed to call on neighboring cities' forces to help handle its load, Scheerer said.

In fact, the ordeal might have helped the department reassess the way it allocates some of its resources.

The extra ambulance stored at Station No. 2 during the displacement turned out to be a valued addition, Scheerer said, considering the fact that 80 percent of all calls are medical and 60 percent of those are made out of Station No. 2's southeast corner.

Now, Scheerer said it makes sense to either keep the ambulance there or add a new one to the force.

Edina's experience also is being watched by others.

St. Louis Park Fire Chief Luke Stemmer has called, seeking advice. Stemmer's department has its eye on building two new firehouses, and it might just try the same approach, rebuilding on existing sites.

Erik Borg is a University of Minnesota journalism student on assignment for the Star Tribune.