With a new headquarters slated to open in 2025, and the question of keeping its current headquarters on Fourth Street as an operating station before council, Cornwall Fire Services has its next requested structure included in next year’s capital budget.
Cornwall Fire Services wants to build a new training centre on the grounds of its new headquarters located at the northwest corner of Brookdale Avenue and Tollgate Road, at a cost of $1.1 million. Fire Chief Matthew Stephenson pitched the project to council on Nov. 14, on the grounds the current structures firefighters train at on Saunders Drive have outlived their purpose and the cost of this new training site could be covered by renting it out to other fire services.
Stephenson has proposed using $265,500 from development charges, and mortgaging the remaining $834,500, suggesting rental revenue from other fire services could provide $110,000 a year over 10 years to repay the mortgage. The facility’s total cost would be $1.1 million.
“Twenty year-old rusted out sea containers aren’t the ideal training equipment to use,” Stephenson said in response to a question about Saunders Drive from Coun. Sarah Good. “They’re fully insufficient and unsafe.”
What’s proposed is a two-stack system of similar structures, which would include a 20-foot burn room and other features allowing for repeated live-fire training using Class A fuel in the various scenarios firefighters might encounter when on a fire call.
The math on repaying the mortgage only works though, if Cornwall builds this new training centre, has it designated as a regional training centre by the Office of the Ontario Fire Marshal (OFM), and starts marketing it to other fire departments in Eastern Ontario. Stephenson noted the closure of the OFM training college in Gravenhurst has had every fire service looking for the appropriate facilities to train its personnel.
Coun. Denis Sabourin asked Stephenson about that part of the pitch, referring to the June release from the Ontario government that it was funding various fire training centres across Ontario, including a $970,150 grant for a train-the-trainer program run by the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association in Niagara, Toronto, and Kingston. Also included in that announcement was funding for fire training facilities in Georgina, Orangeville, Newmarket, Clarington, and Hanover.
The city would also not be the first to market in the region— while Sabourin noted he considers Kingston to be “Eastern Ontario west,” there’s a regional training centre in Lyndhurst, the City of Clarence-Rockland runs one in Bourget, and Ottawa Fire Services has one as well.
“The idea of training centre is not the best kept secret, other fire departments are talking about it,” Sabourin said.
“The province advises additional funding sources will be forthcoming,” Stephenson said in response to the possibility of Ontario funding. “But they haven’t decided what the streams are going to be for.”