Breaking ground

• Ground breaking

justine wettschreck/Daily Globe Several retired firefighters looked on as Worthington Mayor Al Oberloh and other city officials broke ground on the new fire station Tuesday afternoon at the old Campbell’s Soup site.

Talk about it

WORTHINGTON — He’s been involved in a lot of groundbreakings, Worthington Mayor Al Oberloh said Tuesday afternoon, but this was the first one he could remember when there wasn’t much ground left to break.

“Worthington Excavating waited until right after King Turkey Day to get started, then they really went to work,” Oberloh stated.

Oberloh, council members and other city officials gathered Tuesday with active and retired firefighters to officially break ground on Worthington’s new fire hall, which is being built on the site of the old Campbell’s Soup plant.

Heralded by a parade of fire trucks and led to the site by the Worthington Middle School Marching Band, the groundbreaking is an event Fire Chief Rick Von Holdt has been looking forward to for a while.

“This makes it official,” he stated.

Quite a few firefighters have worked hard for the community to participate in the design of the new station, Von Holdt said.

“With the council’s support and blessing, we’ve made it this far,” he added. “And it’s good to see so many retired firefighters here as we move into the 21st century.”

Oberloh gave a brief synopsis of the events that led up to the groundbreaking, referring to what was once an abandoned plant as “a nasty eyesore.” The city worked with the legislature to get the building removed, gaining an $800,000 grant to get the job done correctly.

“We had to have a public purpose for the property,” he explained.

After the hospital was sold to Sanford, the city decided to invest back in the community, first with the aquatic center, then with the fire hall. The current hall, built in 1966, had been overrun with larger equipment.

“The firefighters were climbing over trucks to get to other equipment,” Oberloh said. “There was just no room.”

Two former fire chiefs, Jeff Flynn and Chip Peters, said they remember battling building issues during their own tenures as chief. In the early 1990s, Flynn said he got the alley behind the building vacated, hoping to add on a bay, but it never happened. Space was an issue, but so was the building itself. The bricks were cracked, both men said.

“You could see daylight coming through,” Peters said.

“You could throw a cat through the walls,” Flynn joked.

Both men remember stuffing insulation into the cracks and shuffling trucks between bays.

“I’m just glad the city was able to move forward with the project,” Flynn said.

Worthington Public Safety Director Mike Cumiskey said a display of the project is available at the Worthington Area Chamber of Commerce, and the materials which will be used for the brickwork are available to view behind the city hall.

“I think we’re going to see a pretty nice building here in a few months,” Cumiskey stated.

A building, Oberloh said, that would last in the community for many years to come.

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