A New Home for Beacon Firefighters

State-of-the-art central station opens

One minute ahead of schedule, at 7:59 a.m. on Monday (Oct. 28), firefighter Eric Jensen raised the U.S. flag above the new Beacon fire station at 1140 Wolcott Ave. 

Dennis Lahey Sr., 91, a 64-year volunteer who was the fire chief for two stints in the 1970s, and Pat Kelliher, a volunteer who retired in March after 54 years of service, held the flag as Jensen attached it to the pole. Ten firefighters and Chief Tom Lucchesi lined the sidewalk, saluting the flag beneath blue skies streaked with clouds. 

Although a few punch-list items remain, firefighters moved into the $14.7 million City of Beacon Fire Department this week, marking the completion of the city’s largest-ever capital project. A ribbon-cutting is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Nov. 16.

“I’m really happy with how this came out,” said Lucchesi, who was named chief in April 2023, two months before construction began. “It’s been a big morale boost, everyone working toward this day to finally be here.”

South Avenue, a one-way street during construction, will return to two-way traffic today (Nov. 1). The municipal parking lot next to the station has been paved and striped for 52 spaces, with eight reserved for firefighters. It is now outfitted with electric-vehicle charging stations and opens to the public today. 

The road to get to the new station was not always straightforward. The city paid for consultants beginning in 2006 to study what could be done with its three aging fire stations — the Beacon Engine facility on East Main Street, Mase Hook and Ladder on Main and the Lewis Tompkins Hose Co. station on South Avenue.

Memorial Park and the Sargent Elementary School campus were among the sites considered for a new central station until, in 2020, a month before the pandemic shutdown, the City Council voted to close the 130-year-old Beacon Engine facility. The plan was to rehab the other stations, but with neither meeting modern firefighting standards, the city pivoted by early 2022 to a plan to gut, refurbish and enlarge Tompkins Hose, which was built in 1979. 

During construction, firefighters worked from Mase and the Highway Department garage on Camp Beacon Road, where a construction trailer was converted to sleeping quarters and a fire truck was stored inside the garage. 

The newly completed, 16,400-square-foot, two-story brick structure on Wolcott reverses the orientation of the former Tompkins Hose station. It has three bays on Wolcott, eliminating the tight squeeze for trucks entering the station via South Avenue. Three bays that face South Avenue have been reduced to two, one for a spare truck and the other for Ambulnz, the city’s paid ambulance service provider.

Behind the Wolcott Avenue bays are decontamination facilities, which did not exist in the old stations. There’s a stabilization unit for firefighters’ air packs, showers and industrial washers for uniforms. The “hot” decontamination zone is designed to keep ultra-fine toxins that firefighters are exposed to through smoke and other elements from entering the “cool zone,” or the rest of the station.

There are 21 geothermal wells beneath the parking lot that will heat and cool the all-electric building. It includes six rooms for firefighters, who work 24-hour shifts. As of Monday, lockers outside the rooms still had blue painter’s tape on them with firefighters’ names written by hand. Wooden side tables made by firefighter Kevin Powell highlight the living spaces. 

The chief’s office did not move, but it did get a considerable upgrade over the converted closet assigned to the previous chief, Gary Van Voorhis. 

The city plans to sell the Beacon Engine and Mase buildings in 2025, City Administrator Chris White said. 

Mark Romanelli, who joined the Tompkins Hose Co. as a volunteer in 1989 and became a paid firefighter in 2004, said the station is “like nothing we’ve ever had before.” It has so many safety features, “it’s probably one of the top firehouses in the country, technology-wise,” he said. But, he noted, it also honors the city’s long firefighting history with display cases filled with historic photos and artifacts.