AUSTINTOWN — Thanks to a $50,000 grant from the Mahoning County commissioners, Austintown Fire Station No. 1 is getting a much needed parking lot improvement.

The project is broken into phases and the first phase in the rear of the property is nearly complete. Construction on the new parking lot began Sept. 27.

“We wanted to do the back parking lot first because it makes sense with the flow of everything,” fire Chief Andy Frost III said. “I have to keep the station open so it just made sense.”

The new lot will be done to highway specifications because of the weight of the department’s fire engines. Frost said one truck can weigh 45 tons, a far cry from the trucks when the station was first built in the mid-1970s.

“When this was all built in the mid-70s, trucks were 40,000 pounds. Now they’re 90,000-plus pounds so you have to make the parking lot 8 inches thick to highway specification to bear the weight of the newer vehicles,” Frost said.

Poland-based LK Concrete Construction LLC is handling the first phase of the project.

“They came highly regarded,” Frost said. ” They were able to give us a heck of a price … The project is going well and they’re moving at a great pace. We’re very pleased with what they’ve done.”

The price tag for the first phase of the project is between $48,000 and $49,000, according to Frost. The gift from the commissioners will directly pay for phase one. It’s the other two phases, however, that are of concern to the chief.

“I don’t know if we can pull off another phase this year or not. We’d really love to because it’s in really rough shape. This grant from the commissioners really helped us tremendously,” Frost said. “The goal is to get another grant. If not, we know we’ve needed to do this so we budgeted for this. I think we can pull off the second phase, no problem.”

Frost said he anticipates getting the second phase done thanks to proper budgeting, but he blames the COVID-19 pandemic for the third phase possibly being postponed.

“Because of COVID-19, our budgets are scattered because of overtime due to illnesses and the equipment we needed to buy for COVID-19, so I don’t know where our budget is at,” Frost said.

To complete the project, Frost said he is going to look at other grants that would cover the cost of the final phase, but recognized the project has to be completed regardless.

“We can pull of the second phase because of the money we saved,” he said. “If we don’t get the grants, we still have to do this and we will have to figure out how we’re going to pull this off.”

nhawthorne@tribtoday.com