By Kent Jackson
Standard-Speaker
WEST HAZLETON, Pa. — The borough’s fire company received a grant to improve its home from a home improvement store.
Lowe’s awarded a Community Impact Grant of $75,000 to renovate the fire station at 12 S. Fourth St.
| MORE: Grants readiness guide: A practical guide to winning public-safety funding
Like a lot of older homes, the fire house needs cosmetic work as company President Joseph Zajac pointed out in the main office. Rows of holes drilled into the wall mark where a monitor had hung but other walls had been patched with unpainted plaster. Water leaks damaged the floor and crumbled plaster over a window.
All 18 windows will be replaced, and the station will soon have new front doors to close a gap in the existing doors that admits cold air during the winter.
“Our firefighters … the community deserves a cleaner, brighter facility. That helps with morale,” Zajac said.
Renovators will install a new office floor and repaint the walls white with red trim, a color scheme that will run throughout the two-story firehouse.
In the entranceway, new epoxy floors and paint are planned.
Upstairs in the meeting room, there will be new flooring, paint and furniture. A blowup of the company’s logo will hang on the front wall behind three desks where officers will sit.
Zajac has ordered a conference table, filing cabinets and chairs, but plans to give away a slate pool table and 24 wooden chairs if anyone wants them.
The schedule calls for workers from Lee Industrial of McAdoo to replace windows, floors and doors and prep rooms for painting in September. The company expects expect to finish painting and clean up by October.
To obtain the grant, West Hazleton Fire Co. faced off against more than 5,000 applicants but was among the 100 recipients.
“This project means so much to us because we are an older Fire Station and our building is in desperate need of a facelift,” a post announcing the grant said on the company’s Facebook page on Aug. 11.
That evening, borough council heard about the grants at a meeting when council members also established mitigation rates that allow the fire company to bill insurers for services provided.
The borough also scored in the top six of 38 applicants to receive a state grant of $68,080 that will pay for a generator.
Operating on natural gas, the generator will power the firehouse during electrical outages.
“It will have the capacity to run everything in this building. It will light up like it is now,” Zajac said.
Neither the fire station, the police station around the corner at 122 E. Broad St. nor the municipal building a block away at 100 S. Fourth St. has a generator.
“This will become a hub for anyone in the borough who needs power,” Zajac said.
After receiving funds from the Municipal Fire Department Capital Grant Program sometime in September, the borough will order the generator, which will take 20 weeks to arrive. A gas line from Broad Street will have to be bolstered for the generator as part of the hookup, Zajac said.
The fire station is 87 years old, built at the site of the original station for the fire company that started in 1888, right after the borough’s founding in November 1887 . This summer, a leak developed in the roof, which the borough repaired. Wooden panels over the openings of the original windows, which were replaced with smaller frames, wobble when pressed and will be replaced during the renovations, too, on the exterior walls of the fire house.
On Aug. 13, fire company leaders met with counterparts from Lowe’s stores in West Hazleton and Lehighton at the fire station.
Since then, Lowe’s workers have helped the fire company and the contractor scout for discounts to stretch the grant dollars further. They also plan a Red Shirt Day when several employees in company garb will donate a refrigerator for the fire station’s break room, which they offered to paint.
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