Mesa (Ariz.) Airport ARFF Station No. 215, Phoenix Mesa Gateway Airport, is a 30,300-square-foot shared-use station used by the Mesa Fire Department and the city of Mesa Airport Police Unit for joint operations at the airport and the surrounding communities. It is located on the airport flight line.

Designed by Lawrence Enyart of LEA Architects, the airport’s contemporary building forms are influenced by the Desert High Tech Aviation Environment. Through the use of exposed masonry and steel, and curved metal roofs and siding, the facility integrates with previous aviation and educational buildings at the Phoenix Mesa Gateway Airport.

Station No. 215 is an eight-bay station that includes four bays of ARFF equipment and four bays of structural/EMS equipment. All eight bays have insulated, rapid-open, four-fold doors with mezzanine storage spaces above. An observation tower has views of the airport runways and the Arizona State University campus.

Sustainable building principles are used throughout the shared-use facility: natural day lighting, added roof and wall insulation for noise control, low-E Glass, xeriscape landscaping, and shared rear drives for a smaller carbon footprint.

One of the challenges of Station No. 215 involved working with several user groups: the fire and police departments, Mesa Information Technologies, and the Phoenix Mesa Gateway Airport director’s office and airport staff. The city and the airport/Federal Aviation Administration each required specific solutions for site and building security. The two departments have different security systems so different site security gates, man gates/doors and apparatus doors required coordination for their specific access control requirements. The structural apparatus bays and ARFF bays were oriented to allow access by the different vehicles while still maintaining the required FAA response times and security. LEA also was involved in some terminal expansion challenges and a changed site for optimum response times and integration of the airport police units.

Earlier integration of the police department would have been preferred rather than brought into the project following the changed site and after completion of design documents. The design team needed to modify functional spaces to bring in the airport police units and their equipment and vehicles.