VISTA – The floors glisten. Tags still dangle from the furniture, and action shots of firefighters line the walls.
After a year of construction, Vista’s two fire stations, a $12.3 million investment meant to speed up response times, are ready for action.
“There’s a lot of nervous energy,” Deputy Fire Chief Randy Terich said Friday, the quiet opening day for the station on South Melrose Drive. The sister station, near the city core, will come on line later this month.
The buildings are part of a promise city leaders made to residents three years ago. They pledged to build five capital projects using money from a voter-approved sales tax increase. The fire stations are the first to be checked off that list.
A $55 million civic center, $18.8 million sports park and $13.9 million upgrade to the Moonlight Amphitheater are in various stages of construction.
“I can’t see how anyone can say that we don’t keep our promises,” Mayor Morris Vance said last week.
He called the stations “everything we anticipated and dreamed about.”
Grand opening celebrations are scheduled for April 18.
Vista is one of few cities doing major construction during a sour economy. Its efforts are fueled by the $116.4 million that it borrowed in late 2007 by leveraging future sales tax revenue.
The city has raked in an extra $10.2 million since the sales tax rate increased by one-half cent on every dollar in mid-2007. That’s a good chunk of change, to be sure, but it’s a few million less than officials once projected.
Story / photos by North County Times
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