A 7-foot thick, solid block of concrete props up a crumbling brick wall under the northeast corner of the New Market Volunteer Fire Department.
Widening cracks are visible elsewhere in the brick on the outside of the 52-year-old structure.
‘‘It’s a real problem,” said Dick Johnson of Richard M. Johnson and Associates, a design and building contractor that is designing a new fire station.
Fire department officials said the dilapidated building is one of the reasons the Frederick Board of County Commissioners agreed May 13 to set aside $5 million to build a new one.
Commissioners decided that replacing the aging fire station is more critical than building new stations in other towns, such as Middletown and Brunswick.
‘‘The county has dropped all the other fire halls,” said Shirley King, president of the New Market Volunteer Fire Department.
Commissioner Charles A. Jenkins (R) said the board supported a new station for New Market because it is in the worst shape of all the county fire stations, and the volunteer department does not have the money to build one.
‘‘In my opinion, we’re not at a point where [the New Market Volunteer Fire Department] can afford to build their own station,” he said.
Members of the New Market Volunteer Fire Department insist that a new station must grow to meet demand in the community.
The number of calls has increased dramatically since the fire station was built. King said the station answered 11 emergency calls in 1956; this year alone, the department has responded to more than 630 calls.
The membership in the department has also outgrown the station, which offers only cramped quarters and inadequate locker and bathrooms, according to Johnson.
‘‘For a while [career staff] could not stay there,” Jenkins said, adding that until sprinklers had been installed in the station — at a cost of $11,000, according to Johnson —career staff had to stay at the Green Valley Volunteer Fire Company.
King said the New Market Volunteer Fire Department has been working on the project with Frederick County and the Town of New Market for four years.
Because it is in the Town of New Market, the station must go through the approval process for both governments. ‘‘It’s a lot of hoops [to jump through],” King said.
The exact cost of the project is awaiting final design approval, Jenkins said.
The new banquet hall that the department plans to build connected to the fire station will be used to raise money for the operation of the fire department, according to Johnson.
King said the county does not pay to build event halls for volunteer fire companies because the companies use them to raise money.
The 10,928-square-foot banquet hall will be able to seat 288 people, and it will have a full-service kitchen, walk-in freezer and air conditioning in the kitchen, a vast improvement over the current hall, King and Johnson said.
Fundraiser
New Market Mini Storage, 10630 Old National Pike, plans a community garage sale fundraiser from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Saturday, for the new banquet hall.
