The village of Riverside is looking for ways to improve its police and fire stations, as well as its youth center, and it wants to hear from residents about what they’d like to see there.
The Riverside Board of Trustees spent nearly an hour at its Feb. 1 meeting discussing the crumbling infrastructure and space issues the village is facing with its police department, fire stations and youth center. In 2018, the village partnered with Williams Architects, a firm based in Itasca, to have them evaluate the facilities and identify issues facing each structure. To start the discussion off, village Manager Jessica Frances provided a summary of Williams’ findings for the board, as only one current board member was on the board when the study was conducted.
Of the facilities, Frances spoke the most about the issues facing Riverside’s Fire Station 2, the biggest of which was a lack of both space and spaces for the paid on-premise firefighters who stay there overnight. Overnight firefighters — three or four of them work the shift — sleep in a shared room with “maybe two feet” between the bunkbeds they sleep on, Frances said, meaning only one firefighter can occupy the space between all four beds at a time. Some firefighters choose to sleep in recliners in the shared room, which measures nine feet by 26 feet and also acts as a common space and kitchen, to avoid dealing with these space issues, Frances said.
There is also no shower or space to build one at Fire Station 2, and only one shower at Fire Station 1, meaning all of Riverside’s firefighters must take turns washing themselves at the facility after they’re called out to a fire, Frances said.
Frances also addressed the need for a new youth center building in Riverside. The youth center houses Riverside TV, which records each board meeting, as well as administrative offices for the fire department and document storage space for multiple village departments, but its crumbling infrastructure has immediate needs the village must address — including new windows, the removal of tiles that have glue containing asbestos and more — unless they plan on tearing it down and replacing it.
At the meeting, Riverside President Douglas Pollock provided five potential paths forward to address the needs of these facilities. While each option had different pros and cons, the board of trustees seemed to lean toward replacing Fire Station 1 with a consolidated and improved fire station in the first phase before dealing with the youth center as a second phase. The trustees all agreed that these facilities needed to be addressed so Riverside’s firefighters and residents have access to the best spaces possible.
“It just strikes me that our facilities are inconvenient, they’re dingy, they’re dirty,” trustee Jill Mateo said at the meeting. “But more importantly, they’re not safe, and we can’t postpone [improvements] any longer.”
The trustees also agreed that they want to hear from Riverside residents about these facilities so they can take advantage of the opportunity to create new spaces for the village, such as adding a basketball court to the youth center.
“I am interested in how we plan to increase community awareness around the issue,” trustee Megan Claucherty said at the meeting. “I have done some polling of people I see around town. I think people are largely unaware of the issue.”
In the end, the board agreed to have Frances reach out to Williams Architecture to see if they could mock up images of some potential changes to the facilities so the village would have something to show residents.
Ultimately, Pollock said at the meeting, the most important goal for the project right now is to make sure Riversiders know about it.
“A concurrent objective, last meeting and this meeting and going forward, is to get this issue into the public realm, let people know we’re talking about this, make people aware of it,” he said. “So that when we do have to decide and spend money, our residents, our community will have had the chance to think about it.”
