Could Southwest Lakeland see another fire station? Here's where it will be

Lakeland Fire Chief Doug Riley demonstrated he's learned a valuable lesson during his five-year quest to find a suitable piece of land for Fire Station 8: It's better to secure the resources you need in advance.

During the city's strategic planning retreat on May 14, Riley announced that the Lakeland Fire Department has worked out a deal with Lakeland Linder International Airport to secure land for the future Fire Station 9 in the city's southwest district.

"We do have some good news. Our partners at the airport ... they basically told us they have property south of the airport. They are willing to partner with us to allow us to have a piece of that property to build a fire station when the day comes, when we are looking at a Station 9," the chief said.

Airport Director Kris Hallstrand said the fire department has been offered land off the northeast corner of West Pipkin and Medulla roads. The site currently has concrete signage on the corner announcing it as the main entryway into the Sun 'n Fun campus at Lakeland Linder airport.

"If we can help the community by providing a need for the fire department, it's a win for all of us," Hallstrand said.

Residents of Southwest Lakeland have been pushing city officials to consider expanding fire rescue services in the area since at least 2021. Carillon Lakes residents asked commissioners to consider a fire station south of the airport when it approved plans for an expansion of Morgan Creek Preserve.

Fire Station 7, off Drane Field Road on the airport's north side, responded to 1,270 calls in 2020, Riley said, the fewest of any of the city's fire station. However, the main issues are its response times — averaging 8 minutes to respond to a structure fire.

Riley previously told commissioners it was Fire Station 7's location, with heavy traffic on nearby roads, that resulted in lengthy response times.

"It's a fairly short distance if we could go straight across the airport, but we can't," the fire chief said in 2021. "If we use Hamilton or Waring roads to get to Morgan Creek, Riverstone, we have nine- to 12-minute response times which we are not comfortable with."

The fire department's response times in Southwest Lakeland do not appear to have improved much over time. Fire Station 7 had an average response time of about 7 minutes, 15 seconds for six calls coded as "building fires," and took more than seven minutes on average to get to motor vehicle accidents with reported injuries. It took more than eight minutes on average for Station 7 firefighters to reach passenger vehicle fires.

The offered site on the south side of the airport is ideal in many ways, Riley told commissioners.

"We could not ask for a better location, that's an even bigger plus," he said. "It's a perfect spot, instant access to our main thoroughfares, signaled intersection, we couldn't ask for it to be any better."

The West Pipkin Road and Medulla Road intersection was signalized earlier this year after a Central Florida Aerospace Academy student was struck and killed there in December 2023.

Riley said a lot more conversations are needed to work out further details of a fire station on the site.

Hallstrand said she had only one request in exchange for offering the land to the fire department: the future station include a bay to house at at least one aircraft fire rescue truck.

Sara-Megan Walsh can be reached at swalsh@theledger.com or 863-802-7545. Follow on X @SaraWalshFl.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Lakeland fire chief: Land secured for Southwest's future Station 9