RANGELEY – The 100-year-old fire station is archaic.

The ambulance station, which sits on the town line, isn’t big enough to store the ambulances.

One is kept over a mile away from responders. The other is garaged 10 miles distant.

Then there’s the police station. The dusty, decrepit abandoned sewer department building is more safety concern than safety cornerstone.

It’s no wonder that people here – public safety workers in particular – are looking forward to January. That’s when the new public safety building will open its doors on its six garage bays. It will serve the three public safety units, all under one roof.

It’s been a long time coming, said Mark Beauregard, chairman of Board of Selectmen.

Rangeley voters finally agreed to ante up $850,000 for the project during a town meeting session in the summer of 2002.

The firm the town was working with said it erred. While it was estimated to cost $850,000, the building cost would exceed $1 million.

The town put the project on hold and went back to the drawing board. Selectmen toured public safety buildings around the state last winter. They came away with some ideas, and put the project back out to bid.

Design fits

In the end, Langford and Low Inc. of Portland got the job. Town employees liked the firm’s design the best. Besides, it would better blend into the School Street residential area where it was to be built, adding onto the old town office.

Construction started in late August. The building should be weather tight by late November. Then in January, public safety workers will say good-bye to their old hovels, and move into their brand-spanking new digs.

Police Chief Phil Weymouth is excited, to say the least. “I’ve heard all sides of this from ‘It’s too big’ to ‘It’s too small.’ You are never going to please everyone, though… for me, it’s going to be a 100 percent improvement. I think the town has made a good, positive step forward.”

Weymouth says his new office will be more welcoming to residents looking for police and will help attract officers to work for the town. The response time on calls will be quicker for all departments, he said.

“We’re here as much as we are at home and even when we are home, the phone can still ring and we get called in,” Weymouth noted. “Up there, it’s going to be real nice.”

The project includes an addition to the town office that will house a 75-person public meeting room, rest rooms and two new offices.

Amenities

There will also be living quarters for ambulance crews: two bedrooms, a day room, a kitchenette and a bathroom, all air conditioned.

The 65- by 100-foot apparatus area will have two ambulance bays and four for fire equipment, as well as a small training/meeting space, Beauregard said.

The one-story wooden addition will have vinyl siding with a metal roof on the apparatus section and the rest shingled.

Other work includes converting the town office meeting room into three offices. The parking lot will be expanded from 22 spaces to at least 37. The baseball field behind the building will stay.

“It was time for us to be efficient and convenient and modern,” said Beauregard. “I think it’s going to be a good looking building and very functional at a price the taxpayers can afford.”

Selectmen say the work will come in at the $850,000 originally approved by voters, or joke that they’ll use the stipends to pay any overages.

The public safety building will be named for Harlan Doak, who died in 2002. Doak founded the Ambulance Service and served 50 years as a volunteer firefighter.

sdepoy@sunjournal.com

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