Concerns prompt fire district to revise training tower plan

SUGAR GROVE – Sugar Grove Fire Protection District on April 16 offered the village board an alternative to its previous proposal for a firefighter training facility some residents opposed.

The board on April 2 reviewed the district’s request to build the facility at the rear of the fire station property at 25 Municipal Drive, on a site bordering a residential neighborhood. Department officials said they had changed the plan in response to residents’ concerns at a public hearing in the fall about how the facility would look. They modified the building’s design to feature a roof and make it the same color as the fire station.

Fire officials on April 2 also responded to concerns about the facility’s height, saying it wouldn’t really be a tower but would have a height of 26 feet compared to the 32-foot-high existing fire station. And, to address residents’ worries about smoke, they said a combination of straw, hay and wood pallets would be burned during periodic training sessions, producing minimal, light, white smoke.

But trustees and residents still had concerns about the proposal, particularly regarding the facility’s proximity to homes and the building’s lack of a landscape buffer.

So, the department made additional changes to its proposal including moving the planned site, still at the rear of the property but to where trees currently exist, and adding evergreen bushes, modifications they announced during the April 16 board meeting.

“We wanted to recognize the concerns of neighbors,” Fire Chief William Perkins said. “This will allow for a sound barrier and a visual barrier.”

Some residents had asked that the fire department locate the training facility in the front of the property, but “there is no convenient place to relocate parking” that is there, the village’s development director Walter Magdiarz said.

The newly proposed location also would make the facility stairwell closer to the main fire department building for better security, Perkins said.

“It sounds like a great compromise,” Village President Sean Michels said.

Trustee Heidi Lendi asked whether the fire department would notify residents about when live burning exercises would take place at the facility. Perkins responded that the training schedule would be posted on the village website at the beginning of the year and the fire department would post any changes as needed.

The facility would be composed of shipping containers on a paved area, with two stacked on top of three others.

The planning commission recently recommended that the village board approve the requested height variance allowing for the training facility with several conditions: If the facility ever becomes obsolete for training purposes, the fire district must remove it from the property; it may not be put to another use without amending the special-use permit; it may not be fitted with railings, towers or stairs that exceed the allowed height; its hours of operation must be limited to 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.; the exterior stairs must be secured when the structure isn’t in use.

The Sugar Grove Village Board is expected to vote on whether to approve the fire department proposal and height variance for the training facility on May 7.