Open house celebrates new Bellview station
Bellview – Firefighters at the Bellview Volunteer Fire Department have a new place to call home.
On Saturday afternoon, they celebrated their move from the old three bay station that sat along Blairsville Highway to the new, clean and roomy five bay building at 271 Old Bellview Road, directly across the street from the Bellview Community Center.
The public was invited out to see the new fire station and enjoy hot dogs, burgers, beans, chips and soda while meeting fire department personnel.
The Bellview department was founded in 1981. The old building was 40-by-80 feet, while the new space is 150-by-50 feet, with plenty of room for personnel to move about, train and house equipment. The new Station 17 also has two new bathrooms with showers, as opposed to the single bathroom at the previous station.
The new station, although set back further off of Blairsville Highway, is not thought to pose much of a problem regarding response times, according to Chief Freddie Conley, who has been with Bellview for 23 years.
“It’s been a long time coming. I’m tickled to death with it,” Conley said with a smile.
Jim Norman has been a firefighter with Bellview since 2021. He just wants to give something back to the community.
Regarding the old station, “It was tough; we kind of tripped over each other as far as space. Here, it’s really nice to be able to spread out and have an opportunity like moving into a new house, you have an opportunity to restructure everything, reorganize and everything’s got its place,” he said.
“The services are great, the county was nice enough to grant us the property to do this, so it’s worked out pretty well.”
On a wall just inside the station hangs nine helmets as a tribute to past Bellview firefighters.
The new Bellview fire station has a new look, and a lot of space, to house old as well as new memories for many years to come.