Sandy Springs breaks ground for ‘unique’ new fire station

By ALEXANDER POPP alex@appenmedia.com

SANDY SPRINGS, Ga. — If you’re driving through the intersection of Mount Vernon Road and Spalding Drive a little over a year from now, you might notice a nice home that looks slightly different than those around it.

Firetrucks might regularly come and go from the home, and there might be sirens at odd hours, but don’t let the exterior fool you, because what you’re actually looking at is the newest fire station in Sandy Springs.

Local leaders and residents gathered at 7800 Mount Vernon Road March 16 to officially break ground on Sandy Springs Fire Station 5, a state-of-the-art, 11,000-square-foot firehouse, designed to blend in with the residential communities on the city’s northeastern edge, while filling in longtime gaps in city emergency services.

“I’m proud that we’re able to build this facility out here and provide the response times that this community not only expects but deserves,” Sandy Springs Mayor Rusty Paul said at the groundbreaking.

Located in the “panhandle” area of northeast Sandy Springs, the new fire station will take over coverage for a community that has been served for years by Sandy Springs firefighters housed at Roswell Fire Station 27 on Holcomb Bridge Road and Sandy Springs Fire Station 51 at Roberts Road and Spalding Drive.

Officials said the distance these fire stations are from the community has impacted response times for situations where seconds can have a huge impact on survival in a medical emergency or whether a home can be saved from fire.

“The response time average for structure fires here … is up to 14 minutes,” Sandy Springs Fire Chief Keith Sanders said. “Fire grows seven times its size every minute it burns in the free phase … putting it here, we’re reducing that average response time to about eight minutes.”

Calling the new station, a “game changer,” Sanders said that after multiple community meetings, they developed a design that would make the station look as much like neighboring homes as possible.

“We were very sensitive to the community and realize that we have no commercial areas out here where we could locate a fire station,” he said. “But our goal was to really ensure that the station was geographically located to service the greatest number of residents in the City of Sandy Springs, and this was the perfect location.”

Fire Station 5 will house teams of four firefighters on 24-hour shifts, with one in-service fire engine and a reserve engine on standby.

Sandy Springs City Councilman John Paulson, who represents District 1 where the new station will be located, said city leaders fought long and hard, for nearly 10 years to get the station built.

“This has been a long time coming,” Paulson said. “The first truly new location for a fire station in Sandy Springs history.”

Construction of Fire Station 5 is estimated to cost $8.4 million and a contract for the project with Reeves and Young was approved by the City Council in September 2022.

Officials said construction is expected to last about 14 months.