This station received the Career Gold award in Firehouse's 2016 Station Design Awards. Find the full list of winners here.
Fire Station 45 is a new two-story, 16,300-square-foot facility built by the City of San Diego. The narrow site is located near the main entry to Qualcomm Stadium, home of the San Diego Chargers NFL team.
The station features include a five-bay, double-deep apparatus bay, administrative offices, kitchen, dining room, dayroom, physical training room and the various support spaces required for a facility of this type. Administrative and support spaces are located on the first floor while the dormitories and living areas occupy most of the second floor.
By far the biggest challenge to the project was the location and configuration of the site. Originally used as overflow stadium parking, the site is both long and narrow, and is accessed from a six-lane high-speed divided roadway. Due to the speed and merging conditions of traffic, as well as the on-site turning requirements, the apparatus bays were located on the widest portion of the site. Response was required in both directions and signal configurations were studied to the point of exhaustion.
The project was started in 2001 and took nearly 15 years to complete. Dedication on the part of both the city and fire department was instrumental in the project’s success.
Architect: WLC Architects, Inc.
