Harmony hopes to break ground on new firehouse in August
The Harmony Fire District finally is making some progress on its years-long quest to build a new firehouse, which has been sidelined repeatedly by COVID-19, inflation, and cost overruns.
On Friday, June 30, the district announced on Facebook that it expected to sign the full construction contract and hold the formal groundbreaking for the new building in early August.
The new, 13,500-square foot firehouse will be at 424 S. Main St., Zelienople, and is expected to cost $7.7 million. The new location is a five-minute drive southwest from the district’s facility at 543 Main St., Harmony, where the department has been based since it formed in 2015.
Currently, the future building site is surrounded by construction fencing and has been for several months.
Earlier this year, the fire district set a target of early July to break ground. However, that target date was dependent on the district receiving the required grant money from the United States Department of Agriculture.
“The holdup was getting USDA approval to go to bid,” said Kevin Behun, fire district president. “Realistically, our timeline was just a little bit more aggressive than what we were able to accomplish.”
The new firehouse will feature a large truck bay, four private bunk spaces, a meeting room large enough for 30 people, a recreation center, a gym and a large kitchen.
Behun expects it will take approximately 12 months from groundbreaking for the new firehouse to be completed.
“Much of the supplies that have plagued other projects timelines have began to be reduced, or have already been secured by our team,” the district posted on its Facebook page, Friday June 30.
According to Behun, the design for the new firehouse has been finalized for a year and a half. These plans were put together with the help of Pittsburgh-based architecture firm AE7.
However, the fire district did not plan for the rampant inflation which would put the world’s economy in a chokehold. Because of COVID-19, the costs of raw materials skyrocketed, putting the project in jeopardy.
“We had originally designed a building that was well within our budget without all of these state funds and federal funds,” Behun said. “But because of the increases and everything, that took us back to the drawing board.”
There were two choices — either seek additional funding from federal and state government programs, or drastically scale back the project to cut costs.
The district received a boost in the form of two grants totaling over $2 million. The first, a Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program grant, brought in over $800,000 in November 2022. The second, a $1.5 million federal grant, was approved the following month as part of the Community Project Funding Program.
Behun credited U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-16th, for securing the federal grant money which will be funneled through the USDA.
“The USDA funding is actually from an appropriation through Mike Kelly's office that he put in for,” Behun said. “And that process just takes forever, unfortunately.”
