Pineville NC Fire Department Headquarters

The Town of Pineville contracted with Stewart Cooper Newell Ar­chitects (SCNA) to design the new fire headquarters for the Pineville Fire Department. The proposed site for the new fire station will be shared with the new complex for the town’s electrical and com­munications services (ECS), also being designed by SCNA. The new station will house 5.5 apparatus bays. This along with other pro­gram requirements necessitated a wide building footprint along the street frontage creating a building arrangement that added to the challenges presented by the shape of the site. The station needed to be placed as close to the street as possible to allow for the shortest response time while ensuring adequate space for utilities and a shared driveway for use by both the fire department and the town’s ECS complex.

An additional challenge of the wide building footprint is the long street facing façade that is made up of the six appara­tus bay doors, the front stair tower and the building’s main entrance. These elements have been delineated in three distinct volumes to create a dynamic street facing façade. In keeping with the town’s architectural brick vernacular, the building has a red brick exterior with piers and corbelling reminiscent of a historic fire house. To further accentuate the historic look, the apparatus bay doors and corre­sponding windows on the second floor are arched similar to those in a historic fire house.

In order to maximize the build­ing’s site footprint, the station has been designed as a two-story station with a full second floor including living space above the appara­tus bays. The first floor consists of ap­paratus bays, support spaces, museum, and exercise room, while the administra­tive and living functions such as offices, kitchen, dayroom, sleep rooms and lock­er/shower rooms, make up the second floor of the building. The floor plan has been arranged to provide multiple ac­cess areas for the fire department while limiting the public access to the building to the museum and training room.