A long-sought addition to enhance public safety in The Friendly City is on the way as the location for Harrisonburg Fire Department Station 5 has been selected in the Park View area.
The property, at 450 Mt. Clinton Pike, was approved for purchase by Harrisonburg City Council at their meeting Tuesday, November 28. City Council voted in 2022 to invest American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds into the creation of a fifth fire station to improve service and reduce response times within the community, with a particular focus on the northern part of the city.
The importance of a long-planned fifth station is hard to overstate. It will improve community members’ quality of life across Harrisonburg by placing firefighters closer to emergencies when they occur. HFD seeks to achieve a 4-minute response-time goal at least 90 percent of the time to all critical life-threatening emergencies. The current closest station to the Park View community is Station 4 (located on Rock Street) and response times to that area are closer to 6 minutes, or longer. This new station will significantly reduce response times in the Park View community, while also positively impacting the availability of fire engines in other areas of the city to respond to emergencies.
The addition also will help improve property insurance rates – especially for Park View-area residents, which includes the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community, Eastern Mennonite University, several public and private K-12 schools and a developing commercial district. This not only helps community members with their bills, but also makes Harrisonburg a more desirable area for businesses considering locating to our area. The new station also will bolster the City’s capacity for handling critical emergencies across the community.
“Ensuring the health and wellness of our community is essential, and this project is an important tool in that effort,” Mayor Deanna Reed said. “This new fire station will not only help protect our Park View community but provide another asset to our incredible fire department members who are so dedicated to keeping Harrisonburg a safe place to live, work and visit.”
The investment in a new station – which has been discussed as a City need for many years – is a testament to the hard work of the HFD team in serving the Harrisonburg community. Through their response, HFD members in 2022 extended the lives of community members by more than 150 years and saved more than $141 million of property endangered by fire, according to department estimates.
“The new fire station reflects the courageous commitment of our City leaders to invest in the safety of our community,” HFD Chief Matthew Tobia said. “The women and men who wear the HFD uniform acknowledge and accept the challenge of placing themselves between harm and those who they have sworn an oath to protect. The new station will dramatically enhance their ability to meet that most sacred obligation.”
The City is currently engaged in a “due diligence” period evaluating all aspects of the property including obtaining geotechnical surveys of the land to ensure suitability. Concurrently, the City is working with selected finalists in an RFP process to design and build the new station with a primary focus on the health, safety and wellness of those who will be providing service from the location. The selection of this site came after a partnership with students from the Applied Mathematics program at James Madison University identified it as an ideal location to impact the greatest number of people. The station is expected to open in the second half of 2025.