At night, Bentonville (Ark.) Fire Station No. 1 shines like gold. It's appearance is fitting, as the station received the Gold Award–Career in the 2008 Station Style Awards.

The Bentonville Fire Department covers over 30 square miles with a combination department of 65 career and 10 part-time paid personnel. It currently has five fire stations and plans for three more stations. The community has about 30,000 residents, but with Wal-Mart headquartered in Bentonville, the population doubles during the day.

Fire Chief Dan White has been with the department for almost eight years and has seen many changes in the community. The new Station 1 has been in the planning stages for years, starting with a feasibility study in 2002. It finally became possible when Wal-Mart donated two acres of land.

Completed in May 2008, the station has a project area of 33,138 square feet. It's total cost was $5.4 million, or $162.81 per square foot.

“I think it’s a beautiful station," White says. "The architect did a wonderful job to meet the downtown re-development plan and we were able to integrate so much in this station — superior functionality to convenience and comfort for the firefighters."

The station includes an 1,800-square-foot state-of-the-art training room with classroom space and a five-level training tower attached at the back of the station. The department plans to host some state and fire academy classes.

The apparatus area was designed with six drive-through bays and one drive-through wash bay. Each bay has a full-length trench drain; water, air and power access; and a Plymovent exhaust extraction system.

“We have three different hallways that empty into the apparatus room, so no matter where firefighters are, they can respond quickly to the apparatus bays,” White says.

The main lobby includes a small department-history museum, complete with its refurbished 1935 fire truck and other firefighting memorabilia. The lobby also serves as a secure access point to the rest of the station and offers an educational opportunity with the fire protection system on prominent display.

The new facility is fully sprinklered, and according to the station’s architect, Harvey F. “Bunny” Brown IV, AIA, of Jackson Brown King Architects Inc., the department opted to promote that aspect.

“In the majority of our facilities, the fire protection system is integrated in the design and buried back in a mechanical room,” says Brown. “We chose to display it in the lobby area and use it as an educational talking point. The display was brightly painted and decorative gauges were specified, so firefighters could demonstrate how the system works.”

Brown says the budget for the station was set two years ahead of the start of construction but they were able to address additional construction costs without sacrificing anything in the station.

“Even though we have done a number of fire stations, we approach every one as a unique project," Brown says. "Part of our design approach is to go in and meet with the users and administration and we see how each individual department is going to operate in the facility because each department — even municipal stations and substations in the same department — may function different depending on their apparatus or administration.”

Brown credits a good working relationship with the department and the construction manager, Mark Clinard of Clinard Construction Management Inc., with the station's overall success.

“With the station’s budget, it was a good overall team effort, he says. “I don’t know that there really [were any surprises] because of the due diligence of the team as a whole. Between the fire chief and his staff, the construction manager and our firm, we really tried to address almost everything that we could think of on the front end of this project.”

Now that the station is complete, would White anything differently?

“About the only thing I may consider is detaching the training tower,” he says. “But the way we had to set it on this piece of property, it’s fine. The fact that we were able to incorporate so much to take care of the needs we have had for so long. It’s a nice place to be for 24 hours.”

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For more of this station, see the 2009 Station Style Calendar.