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When Mountain View’s Fire Station No. 5 was originally envisioned, the plan was to have an onsite police and fire training facility, but financial limitations got in the way. Now, 15 years after the station first opened, the vision has come to life.
The city completed a roughly $6.1 million fire and police training space earlier this year, adjacent to the fire station and across the street from Shoreline Amphitheatre. Sitting at about 3,200 square feet, the building includes a lobby, main classroom and bathrooms.
“I’m excited to have somewhere that I know is going to be available to us so that we can train our members to be the best services we can to the community,” Mountain View Fire Department spokesperson Robert Maitland said.
Fire Station No. 5 opened in 2011, but it wasn’t until 2018 that the City Council authorized staff to move ahead with plans to develop the training center.
Construction started in the fall of 2024, and local agencies started utilizing it at the beginning of this year, while contractors were still working on final adjustments. The space can be used for traditional lessons, as well as simulations, Deputy Fire Chief Josh Coleman said.
“It’s important that we train to simulate emergencies,” Coleman said. “We can put on the screen a building on fire that rapidly grows and has victims trapped, and we can simulate with radios on how to properly respond to that type of event.”
The facility is also useful during events at Shoreline Amphitheatre, because the police department can set it up as an incident command center. In the case of a disaster, the space could also be transformed into sleeping quarters for staff from outside agencies that come to help, Maitland told the Voice during a tour of the building.
While a reporter was recently allowed inside the building, the fire department would not permit interior photos unless the Voice agreed to only take them from two pre-approved angles. Maitland said the constraints were necessary because the building is “equipped with valuable technological equipment and office furniture” and the city is “responsible for the safety and security of the items inside the building.”
The main classroom has several rows of desks, a projector, speakers, cameras for teleconferencing and wall-mounted televisions.
New facility provides for various uses
The site isn’t just for fire and police personnel, said police department spokesperson Elizabeth Mendez. It may also be used for public events, such as Rape Aggression Defense classes and Community Emergency Response Team training.
These lessons used to take place in an auditorium at the current police and fire headquarters on Villa Street. However, as the city plans to build a new headquarters, that space is set to be demolished by the end of this year.
“With the construction, that was a concern of mine that it might impact some of the services that we’re able to offer to the community in terms of engagement and hosting classes, and so having this all ready to go makes me feel a lot better,” Mendez said, gesturing to the finished training room.
The money for the project, which staff budgeted to cost $6.958 million, came primarily from Shoreline Regional Park Community bond proceeds. The Shoreline Regional Park Community is a special tax district that covers much of the city north of Highway 101, with its tax revenue earmarked for improving that part of Mountain View.
Now that the training facility is complete, its estimated total cost is about $6.1 million. Any remaining funds will be put back into the Shoreline Regional Park Community Fund, according to a city staff report.
The public isn’t allowed to see what it paid for? Does did building not come with locks and security cameras? Surely they have nothing to hide. Or did they spend thousands of dollars on luxury chairs?
So we built a $7 million dollar 3200 sq foot training facility? (The size of many large houses here in MTView) They didn’t pay for the land, so that is one very expensive training room. I think we have gotten fleeced unless they can prove otherwise.