Construction on the city's fourth fire station, the Highland Park Fire Station and Training Centre, will begin in May, with the official groundbreaking ceremony set for May 12, council heard Tuesday.
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"This is a good news day today for us," said Fire Chief Mike Pirie during a detailed update from the design team.
The new facility is being built to meet post-disaster construction standards. It will serve as an emergency response hub and training centre for the city's northeast quadrant.
Designed with a 50-year operational horizon, the site includes an integrated Emergency Coordination Centre (ECC), a dual-use training yard, a four-storey burn tower, and future capacity for multiple departments.
During the presentation, Coun. Candice Kolson asked how staffing plans are progressing.
"We're not staffing all at once in 2026?" she asked.
"We haven’t brought anybody on yet," Pirie answered. "There's two elements here I want to explore. The building has more offices than we would be filling... So the idea is that it can support operations for 50 years. The intent would be to bring on staff in 2026 to staff the facility so that it can open and have a functioning engine out of there, along with moving a fire prevention officer from our headquarters to the northeast..."
Kolson asked for clarification on how many staff are needed, and Pirie noted that the staffing request would be coming soon.
"It's 24 people. The training officer that we have today would likely be moving there as well. I don't want to say there's zero staff, but the majority of staff are not hired."
The 17,807-square-foot station and 8,381-square-foot training centre include two drive-through apparatus bays and two additional shared-use bays for future response or logistics. Classroom and office spaces are designed to convert into ECC support functions during large-scale emergencies.
According to the city’s April 15 council agenda report, the facility will meet Alberta Building Code requirements for post-disaster construction, including high wind, snow, and earthquake loads. It will also help address emergency coverage in the city’s northeast quadrant, which the report says "remains underserved."
Some of the facility’s office space may temporarily accommodate non-fire staff, the report notes, as Airdrie Fire grows into full occupancy.
The station is part of a long-term planning process that began with a 2012 master plan from S2 Architecture. A feasibility study and spatial analysis by Americans Consulting followed. In 2023, S2 returned to update space requirements, which formed the basis of the current Class D estimate.
Pirie said the design team, which includes JLL Project Management, Sahuri + Partners Architecture and PCL Construction, prioritized durability, speed, and stakeholder input.
"The ideals that we presented were to be functional, which is to build with a purpose in mind, to have purpose over attractiveness. And I can assure you that we’ve achieved both," Pirie said.
"I’m now pleased to present you with the first official rendering of this station, which is no longer conceptual, but actually represents the detailed design."
Pirie said the layout supports 90-second chute times and uses a 127-foot maximum distance from work zones to trucks.
"It turns out that there are actual formulas to measure distances through fire stations," he said. "The layout was made to support chute times of 90 seconds. There’s a high focus on minimizing movement through doors or other obstacles that add time."
He emphasized the station’s long-range planning value. "The goal was not to build it and then come back and say, we built it too small," he said. "It’s actually going to fill our needs during that lifespan, for sure."
To reduce costs, the team also eliminated roughly 300 square metres of space by dual-purposing rooms, cut 40 percent of asphalted surfaces, and reused IT infrastructure from existing city systems.
The Construction Manager at Risk (CMAR) model was selected to improve cost control and scheduling. PCL Construction, also the builder of the Canmore Fire Station, will manage real-time costing, trade coordination and procurement.
"Being part of the Construction Management at Risk project delivery method allows PCL, in particular, to be in these early design discussions and provide that feedback up front before we go to tender," said Graeme Kerr, project manager with PCL.
"We're currently active in two other construction projects within the city,” he added. "We are able to leverage this past experience to provide a high level of certainty with our cost estimating, as well as constructability feedback, planning, procurement and risk mitigation overall."
Currently, design work is about 50 per cent complete. Civil and structural elements are further along than mechanical, electrical and landscaping. Mobilization on site begins May 5.
"May 5 is the start of mobilization and fencing," Pirie said. "That’s where we’re going to see equipment start to show up and the site really start to begin its transformation."
Mechanical and electrical tenders have already been issued to avoid delays.
The city report identified several risks: inflation, scope creep, and supply chain volatility. Scope items flagged for additional cost include:
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solar-readiness
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traffic signal controls and turn bays
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centralized fibre-optic network and alerting systems
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The training yard will remain unpaved to reduce costs and facilitate outdoor simulations such as vehicle extrication.
The Class B training tower, which uses natural gas instead of traditional fuels, includes props for car and kitchen fires. The smoke system uses citric acid and water to obscure visibility without toxic plumes.
"It doesn’t stink, very realistic, hangs in the buildings you can’t see, and we get to practice all those things on a very repetitive basis," Pirie said. "This is what modern fire training looks like."
He said realistic training no longer depends on dramatic visuals. "Large plumes of black, toxic smoke are not needed for realistic training," Pirie told council.
Firefighter health and safety were central to the design. Turnout gear will be stored in rooms with external ventilation — a best practice drawn from Canmore’s station.
"The example I’ll use for you is the turnout gear — the fire gear, the clothing that’s worn," Pirie said. "It’s easily contaminated with chemicals. It’s called PFAS [per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances] — that whole family of chemicals. We know that when you actually launder that gear, we only remove about 50 per cent of the actual contaminants."
The ECC component is built into the training centre’s multi-use space, allowing it to pivot to emergency coordination during large-scale incidents. Breakout rooms, accessible bathrooms, and a shared kitchen will allow the training centre to pivot during emergencies.
Pirie also confirmed that EV fire scenarios will be part of the training curriculum. Airdrie will co-host a regional symposium with the U.S.-based Fire Safety Research Institute.
"Battery fires are an issue, not just in vehicles. The current approach to them — there is no standardized approach," Pirie said. "We do know that they consume massive amounts of water to cool battery systems."
Coun. Tina Petrow asked if the department anticipated expanding into Bays 3 and 4.
"Absolutely, we can grow into that space," Pirie said, noting that some equipment is already planned to be stored in Bays 3 and 4. "It’s actually going to fill our needs during that lifespan, for sure."
Coun. Ron Chapman raised concerns about mistakes in previous fire halls. However, Pirie clarified that it is not meant to be a negative, but an evolution.
"Every time you build a station, whether it’s the design or you change the business that you’re in… definitely you find efficiencies," Pirie said. "Our Chinook Winds Station was designed when we were an integrated service. If you were on an ambulance, your response times would be much quicker out of that building than they are in a fire truck. That’s an example of how design can impact function."
Pirie added that "every station should be better than the one before it."
He said fire crews and operations staff reviewed all Airdrie stations to identify layout and workflow improvements and credited PCL with implementing several best practices.
"I must emphasize that this is a really tight timeline. The goal is still to open this station in November 2026; it can be done. It is tight. We're hoping that we don't have any unforeseen delays occur," Pirie concluded.
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