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GROUND BROKEN FOR NEW EMERGENCY SERVICES FACILITY
By Eric San Juan
 | | Local dignitaries, engineers and architects were on hand to break ground for a new emergency services facility, set to be constructed next to the Proving Ground Road baseball fields in Lakehurst. |
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By the time spring rolls around, the baseball fields on Proving Ground Road, Lakehurst, will have some company.
Specifically, an all-in-one emergency services building offering a new home to local fire, first aid, and EMS squads, as well as a police substation.
The facility has been in the works for upwards of four years, first in talks, then in planning, then in securing grants and other funding. Now, with a brief photo-op held recently, ground has been broken.
Lakehurst Mayor Stephen Childers expects the doors to be open and emergency services personnel to be taking advantage of the new facilities by spring.
The new building will include meeting rooms, a full kitchen and other amenities - but they aren't luxuries, Childers said. Before approving grants to help pay for the building, the state required such facilities to be included.
Of course, key to the building will be the extensive vehicle bays, which will house ambulances, fire trucks and other equipment, as well as storage space, meeting areas, and other features vital to emergency response teams.
Childers said the police substation - just a mile from the Lakehurst Police Department's headquarters on Union Avenue - will largely be an office within which officers can take calls and handle paperwork.
The new facility will not only change the face of a far corner of the tiny borough ... it will also change the downtown.
The building's completion will pave the way for a series of changes in Lakehurst. With the fire company set to move into their new facilities after decades in their current home, the existing firehouse will be left empty. But only for a short time.
When all is said and done, the current firehouse will become Lakehurst's new borough hall, a move made necessary in part because the existing borough hall, constructed in 1913, is not Americans With Disabilities Act compliant. The borough's court proceedings already take place in the fire house. Soon all of local government, along with the court, will move a few blocks, leaving the historic borough hall empty.
But even that will only be for a short time. According to Childers, the Lakehurst Police Department will expand its operations beyond the existing station next to borough hall, taking up the space opened up by the borough hall's move.
The existing first aid building, located at the end of Union Avenue on the Eisenhower's Circle, will also be abandoned with the squad's move to the new facility. Childers said the borough does not yet have firm plans for that building.
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