Fire station planned for Dunnavant Valley

With the population around Dunnavant Valley Road on the rise, the Cahaba Valley Fire District is responding with a new fire station.

Station 182, announced in June, will be built about a quarter mile north of the Shoal Creek Community on Dunnavant Valley Road, or Alabama 41. The station will assist Mt Laurel’s Station 183. It will directly serve the Shoal Creek, Stonegate Farms, The Shires, Hollybrook Lake, Smyer Lake, Lake Wehapa and Spring Stone communities.

“We are with Mt Laurel picking up more calls [and] as growth continues, we needed to put a station a little further out,” said CVFD public information officer Grant Wilkinson.

This is not the first fire station in Shoal Creek. Volunteers opened the original one, which CVFD began fully manning in 1991. That station, also called Station 182, closed in 2002 when the Mt Laurel station opened. Wilkinson said the department decided to carry that name over to the new building rather than renumbering it.

“It does have a little historical significance being back in Shoal Creek,” Wilkinson said.

Stonegate Farms resident Allison Arnett said having closer emergency services can only benefit her neighborhood, especially as the rural area includes many homes on large lots. With the recent completion of Grandview Medical Center and the Brookwood Freestanding Emergency Department on U.S. 280, Arnett said residents in the Dunnavant Valley Road area have more access to emergency care close to home.

“Having a response team closer to the neighborhood certainly helps in a rural area,” Arnett said. “I think it’s only going to add to the safety.”

Wilkinson said reducing response times was a major factor in deciding to build Station 182. He said currently, response times in the area max out at about 10 minutes, but the new station will reduce that time to a maximum of five minutes.

Pam Ausley, a real estate agent with Remax Southern Homes, has been selling homes in the Shoal Creek area for about 15 years. She said the new station will add another reason that the area has been attractive to homeowners, as the station’s proximity influences not only safety but also home insurance rates.

“All in all, I think it’s a wonderful thing for Shoal Creek and the valley,” she said.

Not only has Ausley seen the area’s population growth as an agent, she has also participated in it. Ausley moved to Shoal Creek in 2003.

“The first time I went there to list a house, I went home and said, ‘We are moving. This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen,’” she said.

Shelby County Development Services provided data from the 2014 American Community Survey, an annual survey performed by the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2014, the survey estimated that the Dunnavant CDP (Census-Designated Place) had about 830 people living in it, and the Shoal Creek CDP had nearly 1,400 people living in it.

CDPs are used by the Census Bureau to define areas of the country that are not incorporated into cities. 

The Dunnavant CDP is bound by the Shelby County line on the north and east, Hollybrook Lake Road and Shephard Gap Road to the west and the Bob Hood Branch stream to the south. The Shoal Creek CDP is on the south side of Dunnavant Valley Road, stretching from Double Oak Way to Hollybrook Lake Road.

In addition to the existing residents, more are on the way with several new developments being planned or under construction. These include Brock Point, a 97-home subdivision between Greystone and Shoal Creek; the Hamlets at Shoal Creek, a cottage-style subdivision; and Mt Laurel, where 12 undeveloped apartment lots were rezoned in July 2015 to be 15 single-family residential lots. 

Shelby County wants to make part of Dunnavant Valley an improvement district, which could include more pedestrian-friendly elements and extend Dunnavant Valley Trail. New residents and the potential extra pedestrian traffic are likely to cause an increase in calls to the CVFD as these projects move forward.

“The new fire station will give our department the ability to be better prepared in an area that has experienced enormous population growth in recent years and is still experiencing rapid growth. It will enable us to provide faster response for both fire and emergency medical incidents,” said Cahaba Valley Fire Chief Jim Witherington.

Plans for the new station, which are being developed by Williams Blackstock Architects, have not been completed. The station will have entrances onto Dunnavant Valley Road and into the Shoal Creek community, but specifics about the design were not available as of 280 Living’s press time. 

Wilkinson said CVFD is not sure if they will need to hire more firefighters, but the department has applied for a SAFER (Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response) grant through FEMA and are waiting to hear whether they will receive it.

If initial engineering work and project bidding go smoothly, Wilkinson said CVFD hopes to start construction in mid to late summer with an opening planned for spring 2017.

To learn more about the new station or keep up with its progress, contact Chief Witherington at 408-7734 or jim.witherington@cahabavalleyfire.org, or find Cahaba Valley Fire and EMR District on Facebook.