Grand Prairie Fire Station Opens Near Joe Pool Lake

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Grand Prairie Opens New Fire Station Near Joe Pool Lake
Grand Prairie Fire Station No. 10 will service southern Grand Prairie opened in July 2016.

Grand Prairie Fire Station No.10 Opens August 3rd

GRAND PRAIRIE—Due to record growth, Grand Prairie officials identified the need for a new fire station in the city’s southern sector. Located at the corner of Balboa Street and Grand Peninsula Drive, Fire Station Number 10 will house 18 additional personnel, all firefighters and paramedics.

The City of Grand Prairie will celebrate the grand opening of the new Fire Station No. 10, 2645 S. Grand Peninsula Drive, at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2016. The new station will serve neighborhoods in the Joe Pool Lake area.

Fire Chief Robert Fite says that the need for a new station was dire. Since the state park was opened in 1989 there have been 61 deaths on the Grand Prairie controlled side of the lake. These unfortunate occurrences are the results of vehicle accidents, boating accidents, heart attack, lightning strike, but reports say the predominant cause of death is drowning.

Fite hopes to put a serious curve in those figures.

“The closest fire station is 4 miles away,” Fite said. “We found out that people who were buying homes on the peninsula were having to pay so much more for homeowners insurance than others because there wasn’t a fire station nearby.”

Currently, Grand Prairie and Cedar Hill share a station on Lakeridge Parkway. However, the 10-year agreement with Cedar Hill expires in 2017.

The 12,332-square-foot building features four drive-through apparatus bays, eight dorm rooms, officer’s quarters, offices, a day room, commercial kitchen and workshop. It also has a safe room designed to withstand a category 4/5 storm, which is a new feature for North Central Texas fire stations. Sustainable practices and energy conservation were considered in the building design. Fire Station No. 10 was designed by Komatsu Architecture and built by Pogue Construction.

Even though the shared space on Lakeridge will be coming to an end, Chief Fite says Grand Prairie will always honor its unwritten agreement of auto-aid with Cedar Hill and Mansfield. Meaning when an emergency call is made in the area, whoever is closest and available will heed the call.

Reflecting the nearby marine setting of Joe Pool Lake, Fire Station No. 10 features a nautical motif, complete with a landmark working lighthouse feature, roof dormers, clapboard siding recalling a historic lighthouse on the eastern seaboard, and mooring rope chains. An anchor, obtained from the USS Fort Fisher, is installed as an art feature in the front lawn. The Fisher was the last ship in the anchorage-class of dock landing ships, was launched in 1972, and in February 1998, was the first ship decommissioned in her class.