AMHERST — Identified last fall as the preferred location for a new fire station in South Amherst, Hickory Ridge Golf Course, the town-owned site on West Pomeroy Lane, is no longer being considered for that building project.

As the Town Council Monday discussed Town Manager Paul Bockelman’s proposal to create a new joint advisory committee that would lead to building both a new fire and ambulance station and a new Department of Public Works headquarters, councilors learned the golf course would likely be set aside for other municipal purposes.

Bockelman explained that the Hickory Ridge site had been OK’d by retired Fire Chief Tim Nelson as the site for the fire station, but not by current Fire Chief Lindsay Stromgren.

“The incoming fire chief did not like the location that the outgoing fire chief had approved,” Bockelman said.

This means the advisory committee will need to have broader conversations in the hope of expediting both projects, he said. “We don’t recommend a fire station in a place the fire chief doesn’t recommend, so that has turned the original proposal around a little bit,” Bockelman said,

While a setback, Bockelman said the plans for the DPW remain to be spread among multiple sites, including at the current 586 South Pleasant St. location, along with the Ruxton gravel pit in North Amherst.

“At this point, these two projects are in tandem, working together,” Bockelman said. “To move these two projects forward,  I want to have one committee that was really focused on the two projects getting them launched.”

As proposed by Bockelman, the DPW–Fire/EMS Buildings Advisory Committee, or DFAC, would  “provide advice to the town manager on the options and preferred alternatives for construction of new facilities” and review both a 2006 fire station study and its recommendations, and a 2016 DPW site study. That DPW/ Fire Station Advisory Committee in 2019 recommended the fire station be placed at 586 South Pleasant St., the current site of the DPW, with the DPW to move to land on South East Street. 

The DPW since the 1930s has operated from the former Holyoke Street Railway Barn, a building constructed more than 100 years ago for a trolley line that extended to Holyoke. The Central Fire Station opened in 1929 and its age means insufficient horizontal and vertical clearances for certain vehicles. 

The financial plans presented to the Town Council last fall shows that the DPW’s $35 million project could break ground in 2026, and the $30 million fire station project could see construction beginning in 2027.  Along with building a new elementary school, which is under construction, and expanding the Jones Library, the building projects would cost taxpayers from $118.9 million to $155.2 million.

District 3 Councilor George Ryan said the new advisory committee’s focus would be on identifying locations.

“Once upon a time, not too long ago, I was under the impression that we were fairly close to a place for DPW and fire, and that we had a financial plan for how to move forward,” Ryan said. “But reading this charge, it seems to me, that that’s actually not true, and one of the major tasks of this committee, right from the get go, is to review again the issue of location.” 

Other councilors acknowledged the hope to speed things up.

“It would be nice to get this moving faster,” District 1 Councilor Cathy Schoen said. “It just feels like it would be moving slower than I thought it would be with both rather than sequence first one, then the second.”

District 4 Councilor Jennier Taub said she likes having one committee to explore if there is one site that both the fire and DPW can share.

District 5 Councilor Ana Devlin Gauthier said she doesn’t understand why there would be just one committee that would be advisory, and not make any decisions, and asked that at least one representative from the Fire Department and DPW get to vote.

“My biggest concern here is that the committee does not include any voting members who would be most impacted by the work of the committee,” Devlin Gauthier said.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.