EMS home for holidays?
By Linda Lemmon
Town Crier Editor
PUTNAM — Perhaps it will be a completely excellent Christmas gift.
Town Administrator Elaine Sistare is hoping that if all the permits and scheduling and manufacturing go according to plan, the EMS crew will be in their brand new home around Christmas.
Currently, she said, HUD-certified contractor Nutt Construction is awaiting the building permit. Sistare said she hopes that the building permit will be approved, or suggestions made for it, in the next couple weeks. The two modular units are within 200 feet of the Quinebaug River but there are no Inland Wetlands issues because most of the area is paved and there won’t be any real disturbance to the land.
In addition there have already been discussions with the town’s water and sewer department about connections to the new building. The power connections will be new.
The site work should begin in the next couple weeks, she said.
Home Nation will supply the two modular units and Sistare said they need five to 10 weeks of lead time so she’s hoping they “will be in before the harsh winter.” Lead time is also needed for furniture and fixtures. “We need to order way ahead,” she said. It won’t be as bad as the lead time the town needed when building the Municipal Complex. COVID put schedules into chaos back then.
The site work will include some minor demolition and then excavation will begin. The buildings will be in the open space between the current EMS building and the fire department.
The concrete foundation and building supports will need 28 days of curing time. Nutt Construction said they’d prefer to have the units delivered and put into place when the concrete is ready. They do not want the units delivered to the site and then moved later onto the foundation. The two homes would be craned into place and then joined together.
The two units should be coming six to eight weeks from now, she said.
EMS crews will continue to operate in their outdated original building and there may be only a couple minor inconveniences during the building process, she said.
The ad hoc committee OK’d using $88,000 in ARPA funds for furniture, fixtures and a new generator. Also available is $260,000 in Local Capital Improvement Program funding.
The 1,200 square foot combined building would contain three bedrooms, a kitchen area and a shower area. It would measure 27 feet wide and 44 feet long. She said one of the bedrooms would be turned into an office. There would be nice clean modern space for sleeping, showers, cooking, a conference space and bathrooms.
The emergency vehicles would stay in the current building. That building was built in 1960 and saw a modest upgrade in 2000. But it does not meet regulation. The crews do not have a good place to “decontaminate” after returning from a call. The shower in the current building is being used for storage, Sistare said.
Sistare said the building would sit the same distance from Church Street as the current buildings do now. Traffic would have to be reworked with vehicles either going around the left side of the now-long set of buildings or to the right around the police station. EMS parking would also have to be reconfigured, she said.
“This is a unique project,” Sistare said and there is good communication all the way around. That will make the project work…. maybe in time for Christmas.
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caption, page 3:
New Home Space
The space between the current outdated EMS building, left, and the fire department will be the EMS's new home. Linda Lemmon photo.