La Crosse Fire Department breaks ground on new $4.4 million station

For the second time this month, the La Crosse Fire Department celebrates a new start.

Two weeks after holding an open house at the new Fire Station No. 2, along La Crosse Street, the department broke ground Thursday on a north-side station.

Station No. 4 on Gillette Street, which will cost around $4.4 million, replaces the existing station that, according to Fire Chief Jeff Schott, had several problems.

“If we get an inch an hour of rain, it comes into the basement,” Schott said. “We have issues with the heating and the cooling. We have issues with the bathrooms. We don’t have the ability to just go in and renovate as easily as we do with a newer building.”

Schott hopes to have the new Gillette Street station open a year from now.

The ceremony outside the station included thanks for many community leaders, who were helping develop the new building.

City council president Chris Kahlow thanked current Mayor Mitch Reynolds, who’s in Washington this week, as well as former Mayor Tim Kabat and former fire chief Ken Gilliam, who set plans for a new station in motion several years ago.

The existing station has been used since 1941, and the new building going up next door will be much larger and more modern — with more room for housing fire trucks.

Former council member Scott Neumeister is a north-sider who said a new station is overdue.

“I was amazed at how bad the fire station really was,” Neumeister said, recalling a past tour of the station. “Just to have to live here 24-7 for some of these firefighters, it had to be rough, to say the least.”

The new building is being designed for both men and women working as firefighters.