The City of Burnaby and SFU have selected a possible site for a new fire hall on Burnaby Mountain but won’t make it public until at least September.
External consultants have identified a need for a fire station atop the mountain since at least 2002, and a comprehensive review of the Burnaby Fire Department released in April 2020 listed a new SFU fire hall under “immediate needs.”
More than a year ago, the new fire station made it into the monthly updates on major capital projects presented to the city’s financial management committee, but those updates showed only that a feasibility study still needed to be initiated.
That finally changed last month when the update noted a site had been selected, and direction was now required from city council to proceed.
City director of planning and building Ed Kozak told the NOW he could not disclose the location until city council approved it.
Since the next major capital project report to the financial management committee isn’t till September, it won’t be known until then.
In the meantime, however, Kozak said the city is “still doing due diligence on the site and its ability to accommodate a fire hall.”
SFU chief facilities officer Larry Waddell told the NOW the university did a “high-level analysis” of sites within the SFU lands, looking for locations that would match criteria put forward by both the city and the university.
Among SFU’s criteria were that the site didn’t interfere with any long-range development plans for the academic campus and that the location wouldn’t interfere with SFU operations, according to Waddell.
He said the city’s criteria were mostly focused on the technical aspects, like the topography and size of the site and its location in terms of response times.
“One of the sites resonated well with all of those criteria,” Waddell said.
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