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| By G. Michael Dobbs Managing Editor SPRINGFIELD Anthony Cignoli was "ecstatic" at the close of the Thursday press conference in which Mayor Charles Ryan announced that by Oct. 1 the residents of the city's Pine Point neighborhood would have the Massreco Street Fire Station re-opened. Cignoli, well known for his Springfield-based international public relations and marketing firm, is a Pine Point native who has remained an advocate for his old neighborhood. He led a grassroots effort over the past week to call attention to the neighborhood's needs following a recent fire in which two people perished. Fire Commissioner Gary Cassanelli said he believes the lack of a neighborhood station could not have prevented the death due to the kind of fire it was and the home's lack of smoke detectors. The 2006 study of the Fire Department conducted by Carroll Buracker and Associates called for the re-opening of the station, Ryan said. "The topic of [the] Massreco Street [station] has always been on the table. Ryan said. "It's been a question of money." Ryan said the station has been closed for the past four years as part of the budget cutbacks that were initiated at that time. To re-open the station, the city will have to invest $600,000 to modernize the facility and then allocate $1.1 million annually to staff and run it. The station, which Cassanelli said was built over 60 years ago, was designed to bear the weight of today's fire trucks. He said the foundation would either have to have additional support or the station's basement might be filled in. At the time of its closing, firefighters had basement living quarters, Ryan said. The renovated station will have the living quarters on the second floor. The funding is coming in part from the city's facilities management budget and from surplus funds, Ryan explained. Patrick Sullivan, head of the facilities management effort in the city, said the needs of the fire station will be evaluated, plans drawn up and then a bid sent out in eight or nine weeks. Personnel for the station will have to be hired and trained, Cassanelli added, which is a three-month process. A team of 12 firefighters will be on duty at the station. Residents from another neighborhood, Forest Park, have also called for the re-opening of their neighborhood station, the Sumner Avenue Station, and Ryan said that a new station would part of a capital improvement plan. The city would be offering a bond to fund that plan in the next several weeks. Ryan said the Sumner Avenue Station and the one on Oakland Street would be replaced by a new one that would be located somewhere in the center of the district. Ryan called the plans of the re-opening of the Massreco Street Station "part of a long road back." |