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Silverthorne fire station updates

Summit Fire & EMS is planning for a new fire station at the north end of Silverthorne. We will publish regular updates here. 

SF&EMS Silverthorne Fire Station
Architect's rendering of the proposed Summit Fire & EMS fire station in Silverthorne

September 6, 2023, update: The Silverthorne Planning Commission approved the preliminary site plan and now have sent the project to the Silverthorne Town Council. Coverage in the Summit Daily News here

August 15, 2023, update: We had a good turnout of locals to our open house to review designs for the new fire station. The latest design includes a few minor modifications, including a hose tower on the north side of the building, which will be used for training. The proposal now is headed to the Silverthorne Planning Commission for review.

Silverthorne fire station design open house
Local residents attend an open house to review proposed designs for the Silverthorne fire station on 2023 August 15 at the Silverthorne Pavilion.

 

August 2, 2023 update: Summit Fire & EMS will be hosting a public meeting for information about the future Silverthorne fire station on Tuesday, Aug. 15, from 6-8 p.m. at the Silverthorne Pavilion, 400 Blue River Parkway. This will be to review the preliminary plan for construction prior to the town planning commission hearing. Questions about the meeting may be directed to Division Chief Kim McDonald at kmcdonald@summitfire.org or (970) 262-5100, ext. 521.

July 21, 2023, update: The "coming soon" sign has been put up at the future site for our new Silverthorne Fire Station at the north end of town. SF&EMS is midway through the permitting process with the town, and we remain on track to break ground early in 2024. 

The "coming soon" sign has gone up at the site of our future Silverthorne fire station
The "coming soon" sign has gone up at the site of our future Silverthorne fire station

 

May 15, 2023, update: The SF&EMS Board at its regular meeting today approved the contract with Hyder Construction and SEH Architects for the construction management and design and engineering phase of the new Silverthorne fire station. Additionally, Chief Travis Davis announced that the initial paperwork has been submitted to the town of Silverthorne for its review process, which typically can take up to 90 days to gain approval. 

April 18, 2023, update: Summit Fire & EMS Chief Travis Davis announced at today's SF&EMS Board meeting that the organization has selected Denver-based Hyder Construction to serve as construction manager and general contractor for the new Silverthorne fire station. While the contract still is being hammered out, the projected cost of the project is about $8.5 million to $10 million (figure updated August 18, 2023), and the board expects to have a final version by next month. Based on a timeline for the routine planning, review and approval processes, groundbreaking likely will not occur until early 2024. 

SF&EMS Station No. 10, Silverthorne (proposed)
A preliminary design of the proposed Silverthorne fire station.

 

 

April 12, 2023 update: Summit Fire & EMS backed a reserve engine into a snug unit at Buffalo Mountain Storage this afternoon, creating a bit of temporary property-insurance relief for some resident at the north end of Silverthorne.

Ever since we vacated our old administration building at Blue River Parkway and Fourth Street last year, SF&EMS has not had a presence in town, and some insurance companies charge more for some residences if they are not within a five-mile radius of where the closest engine is staged.

This should re-extend that five-mile radius and tide us over until we get our new fire station built at the north end of Silverthorne. If your rates were affected by this, it might be worth calling your agent. (To be certain, insurance rates have gone up everywhere, and for lots of other reasons, too.)

Kudos to the management at Buffalo Mountain Storage for blowing in insulation and installing heaters and an electrical outlet to meet our needs. One of fire-medics has dubbed this unit "Station 9-1/2," because it's not quite Station 10, the designation for our once-and-future Silverthorne station.

Spare engine at Buffalo Mountain Storage
Summit Fire has begun staging a spare engine at Buffalo Mountain Storage in Silverthorne to help ease insurance costs for residences at the north end of town that had been penalized for being more than five miles from the closest engine.

 

Feb. 21, 2023 update: At the Summit Fire & EMS Board meeting in January, district officials disclosed aspirations to break ground on the new Silverthorne fire station in the fall of 2023. But a timeline drawn up by SEH Architecture, which considers the length of time involved with the permitting process with the town and other factors, indicates that our hopes may have been a bit ambitious. Although the desire remains to start construction this year, crews will be pushing to beat the onset of winter, and groundbreaking ultimately may need to be pushed back until spring of 2024.

SEH timeline 2023 Feb 9
The proposed timeline leading to construction of the Silverthorne fire station as drafted by SEH Architecture.

While town officials have vowed to work as quickly as possible, part of its typical 90-day review period – when the proposal is being considered by outside agencies such as the Colorado Department of Transportation, for example – is not under town control.  

“We’re going to work with them to expedite anything in here that we possibly can,” Chief Travis Davis told the Board. “When we made the statement last month about shooting to break ground in the fall, we felt it allowed ample time to get through the design/engineering and permitting phase as such to at least break ground and have a foundation poured before the end of the year. Now knowing what we’re truly up against as it pertains to the required waiting periods and the amount of time to complete the actual work leading up to the construction phase, meeting our goal of breaking ground in the fall is being replaced with the reality of actually getting to work in the Spring of 2024."

Jan. 17, 2023 update: At the Summit Fire & EMS Board meeting, Chief Davis provided the latest information about the station to the Board and the public. Among the highlights:

  • SF&EMS will sign a contract with Buffalo Mountain Storage to rent one of its new RV units for the staging of an unstaffed fire engine. The unit is being retrofitted with insulation, power and heat, and when it becomes available, it will extend the "reach" of the five-mile radius north as far as Summit Sky Ranch, for ISO purposes.
  • RFPs for the lead planning and construction firm for the new Silverthorne fire station will be available for download on this website on Monday, Jan. 23, and the window will be open until the end of business on Monday, Feb. 27.
  • Groundbreaking for the new fire station, assuming all goes smoothly in the permitting, contracting and materials-acquisition processes, is anticipated to be in the fall of 2023. 

If you have other questions about our efforts to establish a new fire station in Silverthorne, please feel free to contact the SF&EMS Community Resource Officer at pio@summitfire.org. While we will answer your inquiry personally, your question may be one shared by lots of others in the community, and, if so, we also would like to include our response here.

Also, please revisit this page periodically, as we will provide updates in our progress in links added here.

Silverthorne fire station design possibility
One design concept being considered for the future Silverthorne fire station.

Every five years, the Insurance Services Offices, a national trade group, conducts evaluations of communities for fire safety – looking at resources such as water supplies and hydrants, proximity to fire stations, staffing and numbers of engines and fire trucks – and establishes risk ratings. Insurance companies often use these ratings to help determine policy prices. One of the key components in Summit County is whether a property is within a five-mile radius of a fire station. Because SF&EMS stored a reserve fire engine at the old, former Silverthorne fire station at 401 Blue River Parkway – even though since 2003 it had been used exclusively as an administration building, not a response station – it met the ISO standard as an “available resource” and extended our five-mile coverage north. When we vacated that building in 2019, we were allowed to lease a bay to continue keeping that engine there. But earlier this summer, when the town opened the art center, the lease ended. That meant that many properties at the north end of Silverthorne that had been within a five-mile radius of the Silverthorne facility no longer were within a five-mile radius of the next-closest response station, in Dillon. Essentially everything north of Three Peaks, including Summit Sky Ranch, no longer are within five miles of a fire station, and, as a result, the ISO rating went up for those areas. One short-term priority for SF&EMS has been to find at least a temporary home for a fire engine in Silverthorne, and, despite our best efforts to procure an enclosed, heated bay from both public and private organizations, we have not been able to do so.

Five-mile radius from SF&EMS Fire Station in Dillon

More precisely, the ISO ratings are aligned with actual road miles. This image shows the approximate limits of the five-mile radius from the fire station in Dillon, with the outer edge at:

  • Colorado 9 and Sage Creek Canyon Drive,
  • 2115 Golden Eagle, above the Raven Golf Course
  • 1575 Golden Eagle, north of Two Cabins
  • Hamilton Creek Trail and Hamilton Creek Road
  • Bald Eagle Road and Stonefly Drive in Angler Mountain Ranch
Five-mile radius from SF&EMS Fire Station in Dillon delineated

To determine your actual road distance, conduct an internet search of the distance from the Summit Fire & EMS station at 225 Lake Dillon Drive in Dillon to your address. If you are within five miles, you will be an ISO classification of 2. If you are within seven miles and have a fire hydrant within 1,000 feet of your occupancy, you will have an ISO classification of 10W.

Here is the letter ISO sent to the SF&EMS Fire Protection District Board of Directors summarizing the findings:

Here is the latest report from ISO on the Summit Fire & EMS Fire Protection District:

And here is a layman's description of the basic classification findings:  

Absolutely not. In fact, according to local insurance agents, the biggest factors affecting rising insurance rates in Summit County are increases in home values, inflation – which impacts home values, construction costs and, of course, insurance-company overhead – and losses from major events like wildfires throughout the state. Some insurance companies don’t even consider the ISO ratings, while others include it among a variety of factors that determine how much risk they’re willing to accept while remaining profitable. When a carrier experiences a year with higher than expected claims, it has to adjust premiums to cover losses and operating costs. Additionally, if you have filed a claim in recent years – burst water pipes are particularly common here – your rates likely will have gone up noticeably.

UPDATE APRIL 12, 2023: Summit Fire & EMS backed a reserve engine into a snug unit at Buffalo Mountain Storage this afternoon, creating a bit of temporary property-insurance relief for some resident at the north end of Silverthorne. Ever since we vacated our old administration building at Blue River Parkway and Fourth Street last year, SF&EMS has not had a presence in town, and some insurance companies charge more for some residences if they are not within a five-mile radius of where the closest engine is staged. This should re-extend that five-mile radius and tide us over until we get our new fire station built at the north end of Silverthorne. If your rates were affected by this, it might be worth calling your agent. (To be certain, insurance rates have gone up everywhere, and for lots of other reasons, too.) Kudos to the management at Buffalo Mountain Storage for blowing in insulation and installing heaters and an electrical outlet to meet our needs. One of fire-medics has dubbed this unit "Station 9-1/2," because it's not quite Station 10, the designation for our once-and-future Silverthorne station.

UPDATE JAN. 17, 2023: We will be signing a contract with Buffalo Mountain Storage to rent a new unit meant for RV storage for staging a backup fire engine in Silverthorne. The company is in the process of installing insulation and a sufficient heating system in the unit, and then we will move in. Please note that this will not be a staffed engine with an assigned emergency-response crew but is intended solely to improve the ISO ratings of some properties by extending our five-mile radius to points north of Silverthorne, including Summit Sky Ranch, with an additional "available resource."

ORIGINAL POST: We have been unsuccessful to date in finding space in an existing facility to store a fire engine and push that ISO five-mile boundary further north. We’ve reached out to private organizations such as Murdoch’s and Xcel Energy to see if any of them had space available, and no one has been able to assist us. While we are continuing to search – recently we have had conversations with management at Buffalo Mountain Storage about the new units being built for recreational vehicles, although one would require some retrofitting to keep it heated – we also are exploring options such as erecting a sprung-steel tent structure or other relatively inexpensive, temporary structure on the site of our future fire station at the north end of town.

In 2017, Summit County approached us about teaming with what then was the Summit County Ambulance Service and building a joint administration building in the County Commons complex near Frisco. The county offered the land for free, and the potential for increased efficiency for both organizations was too good to pass up. We moved into our new administration building in 2019, and, coincidentally, also consolidated with Summit County Ambulance under the interim Summit Fire & EMS Authority. To pay for Summit Fire’s share of the new building, however, we agreed to sell our old administration building in Silverthorne – which had not been used as a response station for 15 years – to the Town of Silverthorne, which used it as a headquarters for much of the new construction of the Fourth Street Crossing development.

Ribbon-cutting on the new SF&EMS administration building in July of 2019.
Ribbon-cutting on the new SF&EMS administration building in July of 2019.

 

Assuming that the planning, design and development all go as anticipated and that construction teams and materials are available, Summit Fire plans to break ground in the spring of 2024 with the hope that construction will be completed late in the year or early 2025. We aspire to under-promise and over-deliver on these timelines.

Summit Fire & EMS owns a site between the Town of Silverthorne’s maintenance facility and the Blue River Wastewater Treatment Plant, across Colorado 9 from the north entrance to Three Peaks.

Cottonwood site
Preliminary site plan for the proposed new Silverthorne fire station at 26300 Blue River Parkway, known as the “Cottonwood site.”

Yes, but … Officially, measure 6A in 2021 was aimed at off-setting the expiring “Strong Futures Fund” property-tax measure that Summit County voters had passed eight years earlier to subsidize the Summit County Ambulance Service. Last year, voters in the Summit Fire & EMS Fire Protection District did, by a 2-to-1 margin, approve raising property taxes from 9 mills to 13 mills, or an additional $28.80 in property tax for every $100,000 in assessed value. For a property valued at $500,000, the tax increased from $324 to $468, a difference of $144 annually. One of the selling points of the measure for residents in Silverthorne and north, of course, was that passage of the measure – which generates about $4.5 million in additional property taxes, the primary revenue source for SF&EMS – would allow the department to move forward with plans for a new fire station. Conversely, had the measure not passed, Summit Fire would not have the capital resources even to be considering building a new fire station for a number of years down the line. So yes, the property-tax measure did open the door for meeting the desire by Silverthorne residents and town officials for a new fire station, and work began on preliminary conceptual plans earlier this year. The issue is that, based on current call volume and average response times to Silverthorne and beyond, SF&EMS officials anticipated needing to build a new station in three to five years, not two to three years. The implications on the organization’s capital budget are significant, however, since the accelerated timeframe has outpaced the money we’ve been setting aside annually for a new facility.

Voter at SF&EMS special election 2021
SF&EMS Fire Protection District voters in 2021 approved a property-tax increase by a 2-to-1 margin, giving the department the financial flexibility to begin work on a new Silverthorne fire station.

Summit Fire & EMS set aside $450,000 in capital reserves in 2023 toward the design, engineering and initial construction work on the new Silverthorne fire station. Another $8.5 million is set to be allocated to the capital budget in 2024 for final construction expenses. This number may still fluctuate based on total building costs, including design/engineering, materials and construction. Fully built out, the facility is projected to cost $8.5 million to $10 million. SF&EMS has been searching for federal and state grants which may be available for facility construction. Importantly, a fully staffed, 24-hour response station with up to a four-person engine crew and a two-person ambulance crew costs the district about $3 million annually in salaries, building maintenance and supplies. Summit Fire and its predecessors always have taken pride in being debt-free so that our taxpayers are not burdened with the costs of interest on loans, and we traditionally have paid cash for new engines and other major capital expenses, including the construction of our new administration building. 

old Silverthorne fire station
The old Silverthorne Fire Department fire station at 401 Blue River Parkway became the administration building for Lake Dillon Fire-Rescue and subsequently Summit Fire & EMS before being sold to the town and transformed into the art center.

While some of that money must be set aside legally under the restrictions of the TABOR Amendment, we are tapping into those reserves in part to pay for the fire station. Already, $4 million in capital expenditures has been earmarked for construction of the Silverthorne fire station.

Summit Fire also has been in discussions with Silverthorne officials to determine if the town has resources available to contribute toward building a new fire station most efficiently. One concern is that the town a few years ago established a tax-incremented financing program (known as a “TIF”), which diverts property taxes from new development over a 25-year period to support urban renewal. (Even though the Town of Silverthorne and the Summit Fire & EMS Fire Protection District are separate governmental organizations, this is one situation in which the town can affect the taxes that would have been collected by the fire district.) As a result, Summit Fire has not been receiving its “expected” share of property taxes generated from the new hotels, restaurants, condominiums and townhomes built in the core of town in the past couple of years – even though that new development does impact emergency-response demands. Those tax shortfalls compound over the years, and they also do not generate additional tax revenue for the fire department that would be expected from increased property values over the years.

Interestingly, Summit Fire & EMS is an amalgamation of numerous smaller fire departments that have been absorbed through consolidation over the years. As recently as the 1990s, there were separate departments in Dillon, Dillon Valley, Frisco, Copper Mountain, Keystone, Montezuma and Silverthorne. Those separate organizations each built their own fire stations in conjunction with the municipalities they served. In those earlier days, each community had established its own fire district and built its own stations. Those departments all relied on volunteer firefighters who may or may not have been available at the time that an emergency response was needed. Through efficiencies gained by consolidation and a steady transition to a fully professional, 24-hour all-hazards emergency-response organization, Summit Fire and its predecessor organizations such as Lake Dillon Fire-Rescue and the Snake River Fire Department, have been able to compress into four permanent fire stations, located geographically to provide the quickest, most efficient response to the areas with the densest populations that generate the preponderance of emergency calls. Given the costs of staffing and operating a station, it didn’t make financial or operational sense to keep all of those stations open.

old Dillon Valley Fire Department station
The defunct Dillon Valley Fire Department station stood next to Dillon Valley Elementary School in the 1980s.

It should be noted that a popular misconception in recent years is that the old Silverthorne fire station at 401 Blue River Parkway served as a response station until Summit Fire vacated it in 2019. In fact, since 2003, there had been no firefighters stationed there, and emergency response in Silverthorne primarily has been covered by the SF&EMS station in Dillon all this time.

Currently, when we anticipate heavy traffic congestion due to bad weather, interstate closures, special events, road construction or other factors, SF&EMS can pre-position an ambulance or fire engine on the north side of Interstate 70. Additionally, we rely upon the assistance of the Colorado State Patrol, the Silverthorne and Dillon police and the Colorado Department of Transportation to assist with clearing a path for emergency apparatus through traffic. While there is no doubt that traffic congestion through the I-70/Blue River Parkway interchange is increasingly troublesome, our average call-response times to emergencies in Silverthorne remain well within industry standards. We know that in emergencies such as strokes or cardiac arrests, every minute counts, and we always are seeking ways to improve our responses times to all emergencies.

This is a complex question with a complex answer. For starters, the volume of emergency calls and our response times to Silverthorne and the lower Blue River valley have not justified the cost of operating a separate fire station in town. During our quest for international professional accreditation and our continuing efforts to maintain that designation, we have analyzed our coverage of our district in great detail and still find that our response capabilities from Dillon meet our demands. That said, we’ve had a new fire station in Silverthorne in our long-range plans for many years now, knowing that developments such as Maryland Creek Ranch (now Summit Sky Ranch) would expand town boundaries and population density northward. After the dramatic slowdown of development due to the COVID-19 pandemic, few could have predicted the unprecedented explosion of new construction that has taken place this summer and the resulting jumps in population and traffic. In passing measure 6A last year, SF&EMS anticipated building a fire station in Silverthorne in three to five years, once the emergency call volume justified it.

After considering several different designs seeking to establish a facility as quickly as possible but also one that can be expanded easily (without a lot of tearing down and rebuilding) and one that, when built out will serve our purposes for 25+ years -- all while working within budget constraints and using tax dollars wisely -- the SF&EMS Board of Directors at the Nov. 15, 2022 meeting has selected this design, which is subject to change as the architects and engineers get to work:

Silverthorne fire station preferred plan
Silverthorne fire station floor plan selected at Nov. 15, 2022, SF&EMS Board of Directors meeting

 

Summit County Measure 1B was a county measure, not one promoted by Summit Fire & EMS. And while wildfire emergency response is one of the aspects covered by continuing this property tax, those funds would be controlled entirely by the county (most likely the sheriff, who statutorily is the county fire marshal and who would be on the hook for paying for the county's portion of external firefighting efforts such as aircraft and supplemental ground crews). A significant aspect of the measure would bolster funding for the countywide emergency 9-1-1 dispatch center, which, of course, is a critical cog in wildfire response but also in all emergencies, including law-enforcement matters.

Nope. They're actually deemed a safety hazard, as too many firefighters rushing to emergencies would land poorly and sprain ankles or worse. Fire departments around the country have moved away from them, often, as is the case with the design of this new station, building single-story firehouses. (Summit Fire & EMS stations in Frisco and Dillon still have their original fire poles, but they are no longer in use.) 

Want some interesting history? The fire pole first was invented in the late 19th Century, back when firefighters sped to fires on horse-drawn wagons. Back at the fire station, the ground floor was set aside as stables for the horses, and the firefighters' living quarters were upstairs. Horses, being curious animals, were known to climb staircases, which upset more than one fire crew interrupted during their dinner by a snorting, pooping horse in their kitchen. So firefighters installed spiral staircases, with the radii and narrow widths serving as a perfect barrier for horses -- but posing a very, very tricky route back down, especially for firefighters in a hurry. The answer came in the form of fire poles, which allowed firefighters to get down to the horses and wagons quickly. It's all described right here, courtesy of the indisputable Smithsonian magazine: How an Ingenious Fireman Brought a Pole into the Fire House

firefighter and fire pole
Fire poles are a vestigial part of firefighting history.