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DOWAGIAC — The Dowagiac Fire Department will soon have a new location in the city.

Local officials gathered with firefighters Wednesday to celebrate the groundbreaking for a new Dowagiac Fire Department fire station, to be located at 29157 Jessup Dr. in the industrial park. The new facility will have five bays for fire department vehicles and equipment, a space for indoor training, an outdoor training area, a dedicated area for our firefighters to decontaminate gear and more. Frederick Construction will serve as construction manager on the project.

“The team that we have of city administrators is second to none,” said Mayor Don Lyons. “I have never been involved with a public entity that operates as effectively as a team as this group. We have a series of plans – things that need to be done in the community to make it a better place to live, work and raise a family. What we look for is when circumstances and finances meet and when they meet, this team is ready to act. This project was a perfect example of that.”

The fire department relocated to its current building, a rehabbed city-owned building located at 302 Wolf St., approximately 12 years ago. While the renovated building was able to serve its purpose, the city has always thought of the building as a temporary location until it could fund a bonafide fire station. 

“We’re particularly excited to be here today because this marks a really important day in the history of our community,” said City Manager Kevin Anderson. “This is part of an overall project where we’re going to redevelop portions of our city and the first step of that is actually moving our fire department out to this location and building a facility that has long been desired and long been necessary; the kind of facility that we can continue to bring terrific service to our community and safety to our community. We’re very, very excited about it.”

Dowagiac Fire Department Chief Anthony Stewart said his team is thrilled about the new fire station for Dowagiac and what this means for the city and its first responders. 

“It’s extraordinary,” Stewart said.  This is a long time coming for the area. It’s truly a blessing to have this new state of the art facility for our first responders and firefighters to serve this community. This is really gonna really gonna streamline our fire responses and it’s going to be a much safer building and laid out how we want it for better, more efficient fire responses. This is a vision that we started with and to look at this building come to fruition, it’s just amazing. It’s going to be a wonderful building that’s going to serve this community for 100 years-plus.”