Eagan City Council OKs land purchase for fire station

The Eagan City Council voted on Tuesday to buy four acres of the old Carriage Hills Golf Course, which will become home to the city's newest fire station.

The city will pay $450,000 for the embattled land -- a tiny chunk of a much bigger parcel that has been caught up in court battles, a referendum and a developer's dashed plans.

The station will be at the intersection of Yankee Doodle Road and Wescott Woodlands and will replace an existing station, No. 2, on Lone Oak Circle, which the city is likely to sell.

The station on Lone Oak Circle accounts for about 48 percent of the city's fire and rescue calls, yet it has the longest response times in the city.

It's in a largely industrial area on the north side, and volunteer firefighters must travel through six semaphores to get to it before they can get their trucks and equipment and then head out to calls, Fire Chief Michael Scott said.

The slow response times, some up to 12 minutes, have been a growing concern for Scott, who said the new location will place the fire station much closer to the homes of volunteer firefighters. "We have 17 current volunteers who live within a mile and a half of this site," Scott said.

It's the eighth site the city has eyed, the fire chief said.

Response times would keep getting worse without a relocated station, Scott said. "It boils down to lives and personal property -- but most importantly, lives," he said.

With the economy lagging, some question why city officials want to move forward on the project, Scott said.

In addition to pointing to the need to shorten response times, he said it is a good time for cities to build infrastructure, given the aggressive bidding by contractors competing for work.

The station would be the centerpiece of what could become a fire-safety campus with the potential to house police evidence, fire administration offices and even living quarters for volunteer firefighters, Scott said.

While the state hits a crisis without enough volunteer firefighters, Eagan has provided free housing to recruit and retain them in an experiment that began in late 2007. So far, there are three dorms and a waiting list. Scott said he hopes to add up to six more such living-quarter units with the fire station being built, he said Tuesday.

Previously, Wensmann Homes had a signed purchase agreement, but that developer went out of business and his purchase agreement expired in April, opening the door for the city to begin negotiating.

Neighbors and others who wanted the 120-acre expanse to remain "green space" had fought since 2003 against developer Terry Wensmann and his plan to build as many as 480 houses.

City officials wanted to preserve parks and open space. In 2004, the City Council had refused to rezone the golf course to low-density residential development. Wensmann sued.

A series of court battles between Wensmann and the city followed. In July 2007, the state Supreme Court said Eagan had cited valid reasons for refusing to change its land-use plans.

Last November, the city's voters nixed a proposal for Eagan to buy the entire parcel for $10.25 million.

Many details on the project have yet to be worked out, including how big the fire station will be, Scott said, and whether, for example, the site will become a fire-safety campus that could also provide storage space for police.

"There's still so many questions that the council needs to weigh in on, and give us some direction on," Scott said.