Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue is building an $11–12 million station on the west side of I-5. For anyone who lives downtown or in west Ridgefield, that means faster response times when it matters most.
If you live west of Interstate 5 in Ridgefield — downtown, near the waterfront, along Hillhurst Road — there's a number you should know: seven to eight minutes. That's how long it can currently take Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue to reach you in an emergency. The industry standard to aim for is five to six. That gap is what this new fire station is designed to close.
Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue is moving forward with plans to build a new station on a vacant lot just south of Rosauers Supermarket, near the intersection of South Royle Road and South 3rd Way. The roughly 14,000-square-foot facility is expected to cost between $11 million and $12 million, and groundbreaking is currently anticipated for around December of this year.
"For choking to death or suffering brain damage from a cardiac event, or a fire that escapes one home and now catches two homes on fire, that two-to-three-minute improvement really is important."
— Chief John Nohr, Clark-Cowlitz Fire RescueChief John Nohr has been direct about what those extra minutes mean in practice. Two to three minutes sounds incremental until you think about what can happen in two to three minutes during a cardiac event, a house fire, or a choking emergency. The new station is designed specifically to get that number down — positioning a crew and equipment on the west side of the highway where response times have lagged as the city has grown.
Here's the part that deserves a little more attention than it usually gets: this project is being paid for by the fire levy lid lift that Ridgefield voters approved in 2024. It's structured as a 20-year loan, but Chief Nohr is clear that it doesn't represent new spending on top of what residents already approved.
"We are paying for this out of the fire levy only, so this will not be at the cost of additional taxpayer money going forward," Nohr said.
The land deal itself involved some creative maneuvering. Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue previously owned a site on South Hillhurst Road that had been earmarked for a fire station, but over time that location became less practical — increased traffic near the Ridgefield Outdoor Recreation Complex and improved coverage from a shared station at the fairgrounds changed the calculus. Rather than sit on land that no longer made sense, the district sold the Hillhurst property to the City of Ridgefield for $310,000. The city intends to use it for public space. The fire district then combined those proceeds with a $2 million mitigation agreement tied to the city's Tax Increment Financing area to purchase the more strategically located Royle Road property.
The district's current headquarters — Station 21 at 911 N. 65th Avenue, northeast of the I-5 Exit 21 interchange — isn't going anywhere. But its role is shifting. Once the new Royle Road station is up and running, Station 21 will transition primarily into an administrative hub rather than the main active response location.
The new station will take over as the primary response engine for the city, and it will be equipped to handle it: a ladder truck and an EMS medic unit will relocate there from Station 21, putting specialized life-saving equipment closer to the residential core of Ridgefield rather than northeast of the interstate.
For residents near the Ridgefield Outdoor Recreation Complex and Ridgefield High School on Hillhurst, Nohr said crews will travel south on Royle Road to reach those areas — still a better setup than the current arrangement.
Ridgefield is one of the fastest-growing communities in Washington state. Growth is great — new neighbors, new businesses, a downtown that keeps getting more interesting. But growth also means more calls, more streets, more homes to protect, and response times that get harder to maintain without the infrastructure to match the population.
This station is a direct response to that reality. It's also worth noting what it doesn't require: new staffing, at least not immediately. Nohr has been clear that while staffing is one of the largest long-term costs a fire district faces, the new station can initially be operational without adding headcount beyond what already exists — a fiscally responsible approach to a real problem.
Aetta Architects of Battle Ground has been hired for the project. Construction is expected to take roughly a year once it begins, which puts a potential completion date sometime in 2027.
The bottom line: Ridgefield's population has outgrown its existing fire coverage on the west side of I-5. The district recognized that, secured better land, structured funding voters already approved, and is building something that should serve this community for decades. That's how infrastructure is supposed to work.
Full coverage of this story originally appeared in The Columbian. For more on Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue, visit clarkfr.org.
