Larry Donner, the fire chief for the city of Boulder, Colo., still reflects on the emergency ramp-up of his department’s new regional fire training facility with a hint of amazement. It’s a feeling shared by Frank Young, the department’s deputy chief. “We suspected that someday we could use the facility as a command post, but we were not prepared for it to be quite so soon and quite so big,” Young said.

Donner and Young still were moving materials into their meticulously planned training facility when they were interrupted by an urgent call from the county’s emergency operations center. It was Sept. 6, 2010 — Labor Day weekend. What would turn out to be the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history had just begun five miles west of Boulder and firefighters from across the region were rapidly descending on this idyllic mountain community.

No Time to Waste

Within hours, it was clear that the fire’s growing scope and intensity would require a larger, better-equipped location for the fire overhead team, command staff and requisite equipment staging. The Boulder Regional Fire Training Facility, which was designed by Denver-based Roth Sheppard Architects, was available but not fully operational. So, with only two working telephones and two computers — but no copy machine or toilet paper — Donner’s team launched a yeoman-like effort to turn the facility into a fully functioning command center. Thirty-six hours later, 1,150 firefighters from across the region inhabited every corner of the facility around the clock. A veritable city of support — including a mobile kitchen capable of serving 200 people an hour, a lunch tent in the adjacent field, a medical tent, shower facilities, 52 portable toilets and a fully stocked “country store” supply unit — transformed the training center into a welcome home for hundreds of first responders over the next two weeks.

“We were still on our shakedown cruise at the time and had to gear up quickly,” recalls Donner. “We went from zero to about 140 mph overnight. Since we hadn’t developed a setup plan for an event that large, we did it on the fly.”

Hundreds of crew members camped on the open land surrounding the facility. Meanwhile, it took less than 24 hours to fill every available interior space — including classrooms, storerooms and hallways — with nearly 200 staff members who were supported by a new Internet connection, 40 VoIP phones, a map-production unit with five plotters, and a phalanx of public-information officers who kept media throughout the world up to date on the response effort. Indeed, the intense battle for control of the 6,181-acre Four-Mile Canyon Fire dominated the airwaves for days. Then, another fire kicked off a few miles north. Although there were no casualties, more than
$10 million in property damage was reported and 169 structures were destroyed by the time the command post was transformed back into a training facility.

“We had a quiet little building one day, and a command post with a couple hundred people on task the next,” Young said. “Needless to say, things were a bit hectic for the first eight hours. A lot of it was trial and error, as it was the very first time we’d ever used the post, but once we got in operation things went very smoothly and the new facility worked really well.”

Looking back on the experience, Donner and Young marvel at how the facility exceeded all expectations as a command center long before it was tested for its intended purpose — training. The architects’ circular site plan, facility layout and creative approach to planning worked remarkably well under extreme conditions.

“It’s tough when you ramp up for a wildfire that quickly,” said Donner, who has more than 30 years fire-service experience. “But because we had adequate space and good security, we were able to put a Type I overhead team and huge logistical operation in place immediately.”

The arrangement of classroom and office spaces allowed the command staff to get out of the weather to plan and do logistical work, according to Donner, and the drill ground/concrete pad provided an ideal area for staging fire apparatus. The fenced-off grassland areas provided ample space for the food tent and catering operation, and firefighters had room to set up camp on the surrounding grounds with good entry and exit paths to the main road.

Young also was pleased with how the classroom building’s drive-through bays — which were designed to get apparatus out of the cold for training during the winter — allowed staff to be debriefed and prepped during shift changes. “The architects’ idea of a large area inside to accommodate for difficult weather conditions was hugely helpful,” he said.

A Welcome Respite

All of these options provided a welcome respite from what the previous regional training center had offered. Prior to the new facility’s completion, regional fire training for the surrounding counties had been held at a 2-acre site since the mid-’70s. Over the course of the ensuing decades, annexations and housing developments began to encroach on the aging facility’s small patch of land, surrounding it with hundreds of homes. By 1996, $600,000 residences were starting to pop up within 150 feet of the burn building. This catalyzed a planned move that was a component of Boulder’s updated master plan, and the search for a new site began in early 1999.

After serious consideration of multiple sites, voters approved two different short-duration sales tax hikes to fund a new facility. Ultimately, a 10-acre site close to Boulder — one that could be zoned for fire use — was identified. The architects began to design the facility in mid-2008, ground was broken in June 2009, and the grand opening took place almost exactly a year later.

Although the project’s overall budget was extremely limited at $6.5 million, the designers were able to seamlessly integrate a highly functional facility with striking architecture. While the site’s basic elements are similar to other fire training centers around the country, the Boulder Regional Fire Training Facility stands out in several unexpected ways.

“Other than our building’s unique exterior design and beautiful setting, we took a very traditional approach to basic components,” Young said. “A tower, burn building and classrooms based on NFPA standards were a given. But extra features like the observation deck and oversized apparatus bay have really been wonderful.”

Jeffrey Sheppard, co-founder and design principal at Roth Sheppard Architects, and Kyle Yardley, project architect, listened carefully in order to best leverage the site and address the day-to-day needs of their client through the building’s layout and design. The architects focused on three key goals: integrating indoor classroom training with outdoor facilities in a comprehensive learning experience; organizing the site — which is designed to be used by any of the county’s 26 fire departments — to allow for multiple training exercises and future growth; and designing a sustainable building and site systems.

Roth Sheppard’s design approach also was guided by several overarching ideals that emphasized functionality, LEED certification and, perhaps most important of all, a celebration of those who put their lives on the line every day.

“More than a collection of buildings and structures, each of the props were carefully choreographed on the site,” Yardley said. “Fire station structures located within residential settings tend to have a residential character, but since this facility was surrounded by open prairie, we explored a more modernist approach.”

Sheppard added, “In every municipal project we design, we strive to celebrate our clients — in this case, by creating a sense of place that respects what Boulder regional firefighters do for their community.”

Circular Geometry Defines Site

The circle — which is the most compact geometrical shape — laid the groundwork for the site’s highly efficient design. With the administration building and observation room positioned dead center, multiple props fan out in a radial pattern, which allows staff to directly monitor training exercises within the drill area. Also, the site’s road design eliminates overlap of multidirectional traffic.

“The circular roadway really helps with traffic congestion,” Young said. “We had hundreds of fire trucks coming in during the Four-Mile Canyon Fire — we would have had a terrible traffic jam.”

Another advantage stems from the close proximity of the props and the separation of the drill area from the administration building’s public access, which allows trainees to travel the perimeter to their desired drill location without disrupting other activities.

In addition, the second-floor observation offers indoor-outdoor versatility thanks to a folding glass wall that opens to the outside. The space can function as an outdoor classroom or debriefing space protected from the elements. “This consolidation of functions was one of many creative responses to the city’s tight budget,” Sheppard said.

The indoor-outdoor design of the building’s educational elements also is accomplished through a dramatic skylight that runs the full length of the structure. Flooding the space with daylight not only connects indoor activities with outside events, but it also introduces a dramatic touch to this highly utilitarian building. Even the lobby, while intimate by design, has an uplifting, grand scale to it. Several sustainable strategies also were incorporated, which ultimately led to a coveted LEED-Gold rating for the facility.

The building’s interactive central spine — expressed through the elongated skylight — serves as the connective link to the core indoor-outdoor program components. The structure’s gradual slope creates inviting spaces for classrooms, offices, lockers and a kitchen at the lower end, while the large drive-through apparatus training area and more classrooms are contained within the larger volume. An observation room at the structure’s terminus offers a panoramic view of the outdoor drill areas and indoor apparatus bay.

Because the administration building is highly visible from the adjacent highway, its distinctive, eye-catching wedge-shaped form was designed to stand out, yet assure a simple, understated impact on the natural, undisturbed character of this rural site. Today, this powerful, geometric form creates a striking landmark against the backdrop of Boulder’s Flatirons — a series of rock formations — and agrarian grasses.

“The design is elegant in its simplicity, and it does exactly what it needs to do. Ultimately, our experience in fire service, and the architects’ experience in design blended together quite nicely,” Donner said. “It was a very interactive, cooperative process.

Cynthia Kemper is the founder of Marketekture, a Denver-based consultancy to architecture and design firms.

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