Weston fire station group orders test fits for six top candidate parcels

WESTON — August 12, 2024 — Weston's Fire Station Working Group advanced six candidate sites to architectural test fits as it works toward a fall recommendation on consolidating the town's two aging fire stations into a single primary station. Meeting August 12, the group completed its scoring matrix for south-area parcels, with St. Peter's Church property and the town cemetery ranking highest overall in the central area, and high school athletic fields topping the south-area list, though members flagged that both school sites require a two-step school-committee-and-possibly-town-meeting transfer process. A land-trust parcel east of the football field was scored but faces a deed restriction permanently barring structures, with a local land-swap the only potential workaround. Tecton was directed to complete test fits on the six priority parcels before the September 16 meeting; Lamson Park and a commercial site requiring a wetlands crossing were set aside. The group agreed to delay broad public outreach until after the December special town meeting, noting that a Finance Committee long-range plan from 2018 already carried a roughly $30 million fire station line item — a figure members acknowledged has grown — with a formal cost estimate not expected until around February 2025.