The Rock Township Ambulance District and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office will hold a groundbreaking ceremony at 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 16, at the site of their new shared facility at 3057 Lions Den Road in Imperial. The event is free and open to the public.
The 6.4-acre property, which the ambulance district purchased for $260,000 in 2022, will house a combined ambulance station and Sheriff’s Office substation.
Construction is estimated to take about 12 to 15 months, Rock Township Chief Jerry Appleton said.
“The plan includes 14,569 square feet of total space, with about 7,683 square feet on our side and 4,680 on the Sheriff’s side,” Appleton said. “The other 2,051 square feet will be shared space.”
Costs for the $7.75 million construction project will be shared between the two entities. Engineering and architectural services will be split down the middle, and construction costs will be divided according to how much space each entity is allotted, with Rock paying just more than 60 percent.
“We are continually working with our design team and contractors to offer additional savings through value engineering,” Appleton said. “That could total up to an additional $130,000 in savings.”
The ambulance district’s share of the cost will be funded with revenue from a $23 million bond issue voters approved in 2018, Appleton said, and the county’s share of the construction costs will be drawn from the Sheriff’s Office reserves, Sheriff Dave Marshak said.
Once the building is complete, the county will enter into a long-term lease agreement with Rock Ambulance for the Sheriff’s Office portion of the facility.
Rock Township currently operates four stations, and a fifth has long been part of the district’s long-range master plan.
“The new house will be smack-dab in the middle of the district, so we’ll be able to reduce response times,” Appleton said.
The Sheriff’s Office has been looking to relocate its East Zone substation, which has been housed on the Windsor C-1 School District campus in Imperial for more than 20 years.
“We’ve had a really good relationship with Windsor,” Marshak said. “But the space we’re occupying now was not designed to how we want to use a substation. We’ve been putting money aside to get this done for some time.”
Preliminary plans call for the Sheriff’s Office substation to be open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., with Rock Township ambulance crews present in the building around the clock.
“We will immediately staff with a 24-hour advance life support unit,” Appleton said. “And we’ll house our shift battalion chiefs, since it’s at the center of the district and they can respond quickly from there to anywhere they are needed.”