GILPIN COUNTY, Colo. - On Saturday the Timberline Fire Protection District and the community celebrated the long awaited opening of the new Fire Station 3.
It was built from the old Fritz Peak Observatory about 20 minutes North of Black Hawk and five minutes south of Rollinsville.
"We didn't have a good presence in Rollinsville. We know that the district never has. So it's always been sort of a problem," said Timberline Fire Chief Paul Ondr back in 2023 when Denver7 toured the building prior to construction.
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At that time, U.S. Rep Joe Neguse was championing for federal funding for the project.
"We decided to do something about it and thought that it'd be a perfect project for us to submit as part of the community project funding program in Washington, D.C.," Neguse said at the time.
The old observatory building is now renovated to be a fully functional fire station, complete with ADA upgrades, bedrooms for firefighters, bays for vehicles, a 2,000 gallon water tender and a type six wild land brush truck.
"This building has been here since 1947 and most people have driven past it the entire time they've lived up here and had no idea what it was, and we've been able convert it to something that's going to be used on a daily and nightly basis," Ondr told Denver7 during the grand opening celebration.
▶️ Denver7's Danielle Kreutter shows you more about the transformation and how it will help keep the community safer, in the video player below.
Watch Denver7’s Danielle Kreutter take you inside the transformation from observatory to Fire Station 3 — see it in the video player below.
After three years of construction, the chief is relieved that because of the new location, response times to emergencies in Rollinsville have dropped 5-7 minutes.
"It was always hard to stomach before, because we knew the response times were too long to that area. Just in the last month, since we've been able to start using this, when those tones go off in Rollinsville, and we know there are people here that can get there quickly and start solving that problem, it's, I mean, it's been a relief for us, hopefully the community sees that," Ondr said.
He said the project wouldn't have been possible without support from federal and other funding sources.
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