Goodyear Fire Station No. 186

Goodyear, AZ

Project Info

  • Client

    City of Goodyear

  • Size

    13,081 SF

  • Delivery method

    CMAR

  • Role on project

    Prime Architect in association with CR architecture +design

  • Project Completion:

    December 2020

  • Project Budget:

    $6.7M

  • DFDG Team Members
  • Chad Billings

    Project Director

  • Byron Cline

    Project Manager

Designed to improve response times and ensure firefighters health and safety.

Goodyear Fire Station 186 is one of the country’s first fire stations designed and built around firefighter health. The dangerous contaminants and materials encountered by firefighters and the resulting increase in cancer diagnosis was a main driver of the design. The building design concept began with a zoned approach to defining areas of the building related to high (hot), medium (warm), and low (cold) hazard contaminants exposure. This design approach encourages the separation and control of carcinogens as occupants move through the various spaces.

Several of these new features include:

  • A large canopy on the rear apron allows the crew to wash down the apparatus before bringing them into the bays.
  • A middle zone that separates the living quarters from the apparatus bays and turnout gear areas.
  • A decontamination corridor that allows firefighters to decontaminate their gear from the outside upon returning to the station.
  • A personnel decontamination area that leads to individual bathroom stalls, allowing them to rinse off contaminants before entering the living quarters.

Apparatus bays are equipped with both mass extraction and a direct plymovent system to ensure any contaminants that do enter are evacuated efficiently. The living spaces are further separated from the apparatus bays with negative pressure vestibules that serve as airlocks. These steps were taken to create a living environment for the firefighters that will reduce, if not eliminate, additional exposure to the carcinogens that are unfortunately unavoidable in today’s structure fires.

In addition to the health amenities, the design includes several training opportunities built into the station. These training tools provide the crews an ability to improve their skills on-site without the expense of leaving the station. While this does not remove the need for complete training off-site, it does make the firefighters better prepared to do their job resulting in increased safety for the crews and the community.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Goodyear Fire Station No. 186 is a 13,081 SF fire station completed in December 2020. It is recognized as one of the country’s first fire stations designed and built specifically around firefighter health, developed in response to the well-documented increase in cancer diagnoses among firefighters due to exposure to hazardous contaminants.

At the time of its completion, Fire Station No. 186 was among the first facilities in the United States to comprehensively embed firefighter health principles into its architecture from the ground up. The station’s design was driven not by convention but by research into how carcinogens travel through a fire station and what architectural interventions can most effectively reduce exposure.

DFDG Architecture used project-specific planning strategies to support Goodyear Fire Station No. 186’s operations, users, and long-term performance. The building is organized around a three-zone system: high-hazard (hot), medium-hazard (warm), and low-hazard (cold) areas. This zoning guides how firefighters move through the station and separates contaminated gear and equipment from living quarters. Key features include a rear apron canopy for apparatus wash-downs, a decontamination corridor accessible from the exterior, a personnel decontamination area with individual bathroom stalls for rinsing off before entering living spaces, and a middle zone that physically separates the apparatus bays from the residential side of the station.

DFDG Architecture served as architect in association with CR Architects for Station 186. The project was a formative engagement in DFDG’s ongoing work with the City of Goodyear and helped establish DFDG as a firm with specialized expertise in firefighter health-focused facility design. The principles developed for Station 186 were directly carried forward into the design of Station 181.

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