Construction on a joint fire and EMT station in far Northwest Austin will begin in late October following Austin City Council’s approval of a construction contract with JE Dunn Construction Inc. on Sept. 21.

The gist

The new $20 million facility is located at 9804 N. RM 620 Road. The most recent action taken by the City Council enabled the project to move from planning to construction, said Peter Teliha, the Austin Fire Department chief of logistics. The station will serve Northwest Austin and communities in Canyon Creek, River Place and Anderson Mill.



What’s next?

Construction is estimated to take until October 2024, Teliha said. Current plans for the station include:

• Two stories
• A large apparatus bay, or garage, with four lanes
• One fire engine
• One wildfire brush truck
• One ambulance
• Solar cells to generate solar power
• Rain garden to assist with runoff and rainwater collection

The city aims for fire and EMS response times to be under eight minutes 90% of the time, Teliha said. Upon recognizing areas in Austin that were not meeting that standard, the city put forward a plan to build five new stations within six years in high-need areas.

The Canyon Creek facility is the fifth and final fire station under that plan to begin construction. The Goodnight Ranch fire station in southeast Austin, the fourth to undergo construction, is expected to be completed in January 2024. The three locations that have already been completed are seeing better response times, Teliha said.

What else?

The new facilities are also compliant with the 2015 International Wildland-Urban Interface Code, which seeks to minimize losses where wildland and urban areas converge.

"The city of Austin ... is one of very few cities in the nation that has [adopted] the WUI code and we are leading the way nationally in WUI management," Teliha said.