Construction of a new firehouse to replace the cramped Bullville firehouse, now nearly 50 years old, could get underway later this year.

Bruce Schwope, a commissioner of the Bullville Fire District, outlined the plans before the Crawford Planning Board last week. He told the board that the new firehouse would be built in stages on the site of the current firehouse on Route 17K and would be a copy of the one built for the Slate Hill Fire District. That firehouse is 12,800 square feet, more than double the Bullville firehouse’s 6,100 square feet. Schwope said that the district has a firm bid of $4.5 million good until August to put up the new building, which would have five bays.

The plans mirror the ones revealed by Joe Moore, a lieutenant in the Bullville Fire Company, at an April 2021 town board meeting. At the time, Moore said the meeting room section of the firehouse would be torn down and bays would be built. Once that work is complete, the trucks would be moved from the existing three bays, which would be demolished to make way for a new meeting room and storage space. Last week, Schwope explained that work is to be done in stages so that $3 million worth of equipment would always be stored inside.

In 2021, Moore said the Bullville Fire Company, a private organization made of the firefighters, would replace the existing firehouse, which it owns. Now the district, which owns all of the firefighting equipment and pays the company rent to store it, will build the new firehouse. Schwope said that legal issues were behind the new arrangement.

This is the second time the district has tried to build a new firehouse. About seven years ago, it bought property across from St. Paul’s Church, on Route 17K, east of the five corners, and planned an $8 million building. The plan succumbed to overwhelming public opposition. Recalling that effort, Schwope said, “It was too big and too expensive.”

The company does need more space. In 2021, Bruce Guttenplann, another member of the district’s board of commissioners, told a story about getting out a tape measure to make sure the company could squeeze a new mini-rescue truck into the firehouse without blocking the movement of the firefighters. It could — barely.

The new building will be financed partly by the company, money the district has saved and higher taxes, Schwope said. The exact details have to be worked out, he said. The district, an independent taxing district, will have to schedule a public referendum on the project. Schwope said the district needs to have permission to go through will the project by August or the work will have to be rebid. If the project is approved, the district would put its property across from the church up for sale, he said.

The district covers about twelve-and-a-half square miles at the southern end of town. The company went into service in May 1975 and has about 40 members, two dozen of whom are active, including Schwope who said he is a founding member. The company answers 150 calls in a typical year. This year through the first five days of May it had answered 62 calls.

Mickey D’s Plans Another Window

McDonald’s Corp. has applied to the Crawford Planning Board to add a second order window to its restaurant on Route 52, across from the intersection of Boniface Drive. Attorney Matthew Ingber and engineer Tiago Duarte said the second window would improve traffic flow. Now, the line of cars sometimes impedes the ability of in-store diners to get out of their parking spaces.

The new window would be parallel to the existing window and both lines would proceed to a single pick-up window. The second window would involve the elimination of four parking spaces, Duarte said. The restaurant would still have 57 spaces, well over the code requirement of 31 spaces, he said.

Duarte said nationally more customers are using the drive-through windows than sit-down restaurants, a trend escalated by the COVID-19 pandemic. He said, for example, studies of the Pine Bush restaurant showed that 80 percent of the breakfast crowd used the drive-in window.

Board member Thomas Hoeffner agreed that the new window would help traffic flow, but pointed out that a second pick-up window to go with the second order window would really improve matters. He gave as an example a McDonald’s in Newburgh with that setup. That is not to be the case in Pine Bush, however.

The board scheduled a public hearing on the request for July 13.