SHEFFIELD TWP. — Soon, firefighters won’t have the struggle of backing large and valuable fire trucks into the small Sheffield Township fire station.

On Wednesday, township trustees, firefighters, friends and family gathered for the ground-breaking ceremony for a new $800,000 facility.

“I’m overwhelmed to be able to provide this to our township,” trustee David Newsome said. “This is our heart. We all grew up here, went to school here and now we’re all trustees and the fire chief. This is very special to us.”

When completed, the roughly 12,000-square-foot new station at 4600 Broadway will be quadruple the size of the old building, which is at 3977 Broadway. It will be built on land purchased from a local family.

“We’re not building a new fire station because we want a new one, it’s because the old one isn’t structurally sound anymore,” trustee Chad Parsons said.

Two $75,000 grants, one from Lorain County Community Development Block Grant funds and one from USDA Rural Development funds, helped defray some of the costs. The township will complete the project with a $650,000, 30-year, fixed-rate USDA loan, said township Fiscal Officer Pat Echko.

Fire Chief Joe Bandagski said his crew is looking forward to the new digs.

“We’re very, very excited,” Bandagski said. “We’re very proud of the trustees and the fiscal officers who did a fine job of going ahead and getting this done.”

The current station was built in 1930 and requires emergency vehicles to back into the station off Broadway. The new station is a two-bay drive-through that eliminates the need to back in, Bandagski said.

Newsome said the trustees will look into having a fire signal light installed to help with traffic control.

The project, three years in the works, may have been indefinitely stalled without the Hicks family, which sold land owned by their father, Harry Hicks Jr., to the township about three years ago for $35,000. Hicks passed away in July 2006.

“We had to clean it up and tear everything out,” said Hicks’ daughter, Laura Swords. “We decided to sell it to the township because we knew the township needed a fire station and they needed a place for it … so we all decided to do something for the community that would be good.”

Volunteer firefighter Capt. Richard Husar said he is looking forward to more elbow room as well as the possibility of no longer having to stand in the middle of Broadview with flashlights to stop traffic so the fire trucks can get out at night.

“It’s been very cramped at our other station,” he said. “It’s also really hard to get into.”

For Newsome, the three years of planning was worth the wait for another reason.

“We’re really proud to be able to do this without asking the taxpayers for any money,” he said.

Weather permitting, construction by Broadview Heights company Seitz Builders, which specializes in public buildings, will begin immediately.

Contact Alicia Castelli at 329-7144 or acastelli@chroniclet.com.

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