New volunteer fire hall to open in Belleville soon

A look at the new fire hall on Old Highway 2 in Belleville. Photo by Sean McIntosh

By Sean McIntosh

BELLEVILLE – A new station for volunteer firefighters will soon open in Belleville.

The new facility, which is located on Old Highway 2, just east of Mitchell Road, will be replacing the No. 3 station at 658 Point Anne Rd.

It could open as soon as this week, said Belleville Fire deputy chief Bruce Greatrix.

“There’s a few things that we have to finish up on the building and then get the building officials to do their final inspection, so we can get in the building,” he said. “Once that’s done we’ll be moving the trucks in there right away so we can be taking calls out of that building.

“Then over the next couple weeks they can go ahead and move some of the other training material, files and everything that they need to operate day-to-day.”

It’s a change that needed to be made, Greatrix said.

“We just outgrew (the hall on Point Anne Road), it’s a century old,” he said. Originally, “the downstairs was a grocery store and owner lived upstairs. Back in 1969, when the township of Thurlow established a fire department, the volunteers had taken the building and converted it to a fire hall. It was a 100-year-old building then, and here we are 40 years later.”

Belleville Fire has also sent in a request for another station, according to Greatrix.

He said in a couple weeks, a request for a No. 5 station, located on Hoskins Road, will be sent out.