Nolensville celebrates opening of first municipal fire station

The Town of Nolensville celebrated the opening of its first municipal fire station on Saturday, marking a milestone in the continued growth of the town.

The event drew more than 100 community members, including government leaders and first responders from across Middle Tennessee, to Nolensville Fire and Rescue's Station 1, Haley Industrial Drive.

“This is the largest facility that Nolensville has ever built, and everything that's happened in the last three years with the Board of Commissioners, with the fire department really stands on the shoulders of the legacy of the [Nolensville] Volunteer Fire Department laid before us,” Nolensville Mayor Halie Gallik said.

That legacy is present in the building itself, which honors former founding NFVD member and 48-year veteran Chief Presley Hughes, who was in attendance at the ceremony and called the milestone “awe-inspiring.”

As previously reported, the nearly 18,000-square-foot station is a significant upgrade from the county-owned 4,500-square-foot station on Nolensville Road, which recently saw the addition of trailers used for living quarters.

Construction on the $11.2 million building was complete in May, one year after the town broke ground on the station, just one part of the continued planned growth of Nolensville.

The station is designed to last at least 50 years, but Nolensville Fire and Rescue Chief David Windrow said he wouldn't be surprised if it remained in operation for 100 years.

“We knew we were taking on a massive project for a building that's going to be 100 years old, so we wanted to be certain of what we were getting,” Windrow said.

“It's almost surreal,” Window said of the project earlier this year. “It is a community asset, but job satisfaction for the firefighters will be higher too.”

The Town of Nolensville has already purchased land for what will be its second future fire station.

The station includes a community room with an ADA-compliant bathroom, 10 bunkrooms, offices, a workout room, male and female locker rooms with showers, four vehicle bays, a decontamination room, and a kitchen with three food pantries — one for each shift.

The station also houses a dedicated generator and tornado-safe rooms to ensure that the department can remain functional in a weather emergency.

In addition to local dollars, the station received some funding from the federal American Rescue Plan as well as a $50,000 Federal Emergency Management Administration grant that will allow NFR to refill and maintain their air tanks in-house.