But they aren't going far.
“We're going to be putting the brick in the dump truck later and hauling it across the street,” said Troy Griffin, who's managing the demolition of the 53-year-old station for America West Construction.
He got bad news when the wooden roof came down.
“We were hoping to save it and grind it for mulch, but they decided it was full of too much conduit and stuff,” Skufca said. “So they're going to cart that off. But it's looking very likely that we'll get the brick off the building.”
The red brick from Station No. 2 will be turned over to Skufca and other neighborhood volunteers. They'll clean it up and use it to pave a labyrinth in what will become a small, sunken amphitheater at the northeast corner of Mount and Plymouth Street.
By late afternoon, Skufca was on his way to the Missoula Urban Demonstration Project tool library to check out sledgehammers, picks and chisels.
“I've got a couple of people and we're going out there at 5 o'clock and start pounding,” he said.
Skufca is a board member of MUD and a designer for Kibo Group Architecture. He's also the inspiration on the Rose Park Neighborhood Council behind Triangle Park, known in the city's vernacular as the Slant Street gateway.
Until last fall, the park consisted of two 500 square-foot pie slices of blank asphalt on opposite sides of Plymouth.
With a push from a $3,000 grant, courtesy of Missoula's Office of Neighborhoods, volunteers planted and landscaped the westernmost triangle in late 2006.
Now, their attention turns east.
If Skufca's dream proceeds unscathed, interior brickwork and tiling from the fire station will be ground into compacted material to form the sunken stage of the amphitheater.
The brick will be inset into that in the form of a labyrinth - a path for meditation and a recent idea of Beth Ammons and Living Art of Missoula.
The amphitheater, 45 feet in diameter, will be sunken two feet and will include a handicap-access ramp and some “informal” bleachers. Drought-resistant native plants similar to those in the west park will be placed around it.
“It'll be kind of a neighborhood performance center” for anything the children and anybody else in the area want to use it, Skufca said.
The Missoula Fire Department turned over the salvage issues of the fire station when it contracted with Garden City Builders to tear down the old station and build a bigger one.
But Jason Diehl, assistant to the fire chief, said he's happy Triangle Park will get at least some remnants of the station.
“You hate to send all that stuff to the landfill. I'm glad it's of some use,” Diehl said.
Diehl hadn't really thought about recycling the old station.
“I guess I'm not that sentimental,” he said.
But he did grab a few bricks from the debris on Wednesday.
Diehl also saved a plaque and pictures, “anything we thought was of historic value,” from the walls in hopes of displaying them in the new station, which should be completed by January 2008.
“Station 2 was a lot of firefighters' favorite station, mainly because it was a real busy station and will continue to be once it's rebuilt,” Diehl said. “It's really in the center of town.
“The other part I liked was it was small and it had a real homey feeling to it. The kitchen was like sitting in your grandma's house. And it was in a residential neighborhood. It really is truly a neighborhood fire station.”
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)