Although there has been some discussion, the Fairfax County Fire Department will not likely have to move its station on Spring Hill Road in Tysons Corner.
The 9,500-square-foot fire station was built in 1978 and is located on about 2.6 acres at 1560 Spring Hill Road. It has an assessed value of just under $3.9 million.
There is a bit of vacant land on the property, which is to become a Kiss-and-Ride area for the planned Metro station at the intersection of Spring Hill Road and Leesburg Pike. Some discussions had envisioned taking more of the land and moving the fire station, as well.
“It was just one of the ideas they were throwing around,” said Renee Stilwell of the Fire Department. Stilwell said any discussion of moving the station was “very preliminary.”
The station houses the headquarters of the department’s second battalion. It has two pieces of firefighting apparatus and a paramedic unit.
If the station were to move, Stilwell said it would need to be done in such a way as to prevent any interruption to service. Any new location would first need to be properly sited to ensure response time would not suffer,” Stilwell said.
Operations would be designed to transition smoothly from one station to the other. “That one would be up and running before this one closed,” she said.
“We don’t have plans to relocate the fire station,” said Marcia McAllister of the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project.
The kiss-and-ride had long been planned as part of the new Metro rail line, she said, and can be accommodated on the vacant land. The project does not have plans to shell out the millions of dollars necessary to build a new station.
The idea of moving the station, said Supervisor Linda Smyth (D-Providence) is one that had been discussed, but something she hadn’t heard about in a long time. “They’ve talked about swapping land, and nothing’s ever come up as swappable,” Smyth said.
Smyth said the larger issue will being trying to squeeze a new station into Tysons Corner as the area becomes ever more urban. Although the department is in the planning stages for a station on Route 7 at Beulah Road, there will still likely be a need for a station in Tysons.
A new station, which is included in the Fire Department’s long-range plans, would likely need to take a different form than the county is used to, Smyth said. The station might need to become more like part of a mixed use center, occupying the ground level of a tall building.
“We need to think about, how do we fit things in,” she said.