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A construction contract for Fire Station 8 was unanimously approved by the Lakeland City Commission on May 4, finalizing a $7.4 million budget with Rodda Construction.
The new station will be built at Sleepy Hill Road and Mall Hill Drive in Lakeland’s Northwestern District. A groundbreaking ceremony has been scheduled for June 4.
Fire Station 8 will be the first fire station north of Interstate 4. According to a memo of the construction contract, the new station will include an “Advanced Life Support (ALS) fire engine, a quick response ALS emergency medical vehicle, and an incident supervisor.”
Rodda will have no more than 395 days to achieve the station’s “substantial completion.”
Balancing call volume
When operational, Fire Station 8 will balance call volume more evenly, serving some calls currently handled by Fire Stations 3 and 6. The additional coverage will help the Lakeland Fire Department (LFD) meet its four-to-six minute response-time goal.
Fire Station 3 is the busiest station in the city, responding to 26% of last year’s call volume – or 7,178 of 27,314 calls.
“The higher call volume at Station 3 is primarily attributable to continued growth in Lakeland & the surrounding service area, including residential and commercial development that has increased demand for fire-rescue and emergency medical services,” wrote LFD Public Relations and Information Manager Stephanie Lewis in an email.
Fire Station 8’s final coverage area is still being drawn, according to Lewis.
With an anticipated start in the summer of 2027, Fire Station 8 is expected to take on around 5,000 calls annually, said City Manager Shawn Sherrouse at the State of the City Breakfast on May 12.
Investing in Lakeland’s future
Sherrouse addressed the need for fire services in the city’s “future growth areas” — the Central Florida Innovation District, which includes Florida Polytechnic University, had around 457 calls in 2025, and areas south of Lakeland Linder International Airport had about 370 calls last year.
Sherrouse said that the new station will not only improve response times in its coverage area. “It will also improve the response time in other areas because some of those stations that are providing those coverages now won’t have to anymore,” Sherrouse said.
“Fire Station 8 is a major investment in the future of public safety for North Lakeland and the Northwestern District which I serve,” City Commissioner Guy Lalonde Jr. said in an email.
“The addition of Station 8 will help improve response times, strengthen overall coverage, and reduce pressure on neighboring stations so our firefighters and first responders can better serve residents when emergencies happen because in public safety, minutes matter,” he said.
The making of Fire Station 8
The possibility of an eighth fire station in the city was briefly mentioned at the 2019 City Commission Strategic Planning Retreat. At the time, Fire Chief Douglas Riley proposed relocating Fire Station 3 to a more centralized location to help accommodate high call volumes coming from north Lakeland without building an additional station.
In January 2022, residents of Foxwood Lake Estates advocated before commissioners for an additional station in north Lakeland to improve response times. They said it could take 12 to 15 minutes for a team from Fire Station 3 to arrive at a call in their area.
At the commission’s 2022 Strategic Planning Retreat, Riley reported that the city’s fire department responded to 29,053 calls in 2021. Fire Station 3 responded to around 27% or 7,868 of those calls.
Again, the City Commission discussed the relocation of Fire Station 3 or the possibility of building a new station. Eventually, the commission pursued the latter, unanimously approving the $1.35 million purchase of a 2.3-acre plot for the new station in May 2024.
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