Mikala Graham
Micaja EtienneOriginal Key West design of Fire Station 86 scrapped in $400,000 change.
Riviera Beach’s City Council has approved a $400,000 redesign for a fire station already under construction on Singer Island.
At an Aug. 19 meeting, City Engineer Terrence Bailey presented the proposal to modify Fire Station 86’s planned Key West structure to a modern design. Under the plan, the words “Singer Island” would also be added to the site’s water storage tank.
Feedback from nearly 15 Singer Island civic associations and condominium boards supports the redesign, Vice Chair Glen Spiritis told the council.
”It was unanimous that they wanted the more modern look,” he said. It’s more consistent with the community’s character, he said. “You’d be hard-pressed to find anything that’s Key West in design on Singer Island.”
The new station is rising at the site of the old Station 86, at 5010 N. Ocean Drive toward the northern end of Singer Island.
What’s driving the $400,000 cost
The $400,000 cost covers the structural redesign of the building and putting the words “Singer Island” on the water tank.
“We have contingency inside the current budget to absorb these costs,” Bailey said. The city manager had the purview to approve the redesign, but the issue came to the City Council because the building is a high-profile project.
The fire station changes go deeper than the building’s facade.
Under the original design, columns support the roof line, Bailey told the council. The modern design requires the structural beam that supports the roof to be deeper. Moving that load from the roof to the slab requires a structural redesign, he said.
The Key West design also called for a sloped roof with vertical supports near the garage bays. The modern design features a cantilever roof that floats over the garage. “That cantilever is a very heavy structural element that has to support its own weight,” Bailey said.
He told council members that the Key West design has been on the drawing board for six years. “The community then wanted a more beachy feel. A lot of buildings have been built on the island since those six years, and now this is the desire to make it match.”
The station is the third of three new fire stations in Riviera Beach. Voters approved a $25 million bond issue in 2024 to pay for its construction. Repayment comes from city property taxes.
Chair Bruce Guyton said he supported the change for the fire station on the island because the cost is in line with the first two fire stations.
Fire Station 88, opened in 2023 at Congress Avenue and Blue Heron Boulevard, cost $22 million; Fire Station 87, opened in 2025 at 2799 Avenue H, cost $21 million; and Fire Station 86 on the island is expected to cost $19.7 million, Guyton said.
“Now, quite frankly, I think we overspent on all of them,” he said.
Even with the $400,000 change, the price of the Singer Island station is projected to come in under the first two stations, he noted.
Questions about the timing
Council Member KaShamba Miller-Anderson asked whether the changes in the project really reflect the desires of the community.
“I certainly want to make sure that, with us making this $400,000 change, it does represent a number of people,” Miller-Anderson said. “So, just want to make sure that’s exactly what the community is looking for before I can support that.”
Mayor Doug Lawson questioned why the city would put Singer Island on the water tank. “We don’t have Park Manor on Fire Station 88. We don’t have Federal Gardens on 87,” he said, referring to the neighborhoods where those stations reside.
Spiritis defended the plan: “There is no signage on Singer Island where people know they are on Singer Island.” The water tank will read Riviera Beach and Singer Island. “So this kind of brings us together,” he said.
Council Member Shirley Lanier questioned why the redesign is happening now.
“It just seems out of the blue that we’re doing something like this,” she said. “I thought that we really wanted to move forward and to get through with this as soon as possible.”
She added, “I think this is some type of vanity project to put the name on there.”
During public comment, some residents also questioned the reason for the change and whether potential cost overruns or delays during construction had been considered.
“What you really should have done is taken $5 million and rehabbed the existing structure,” Fane Lozman, a city property owner, told the council.
The council approved the redesign by a 3-2 vote with Lanier and Miller-Anderson voting no.
“This $400,000 investment is a small investment in an infrastructure that’s going to last 50 years,” Spiritis said.
Who wrote this story: This story was reported by Community Voices writers Mikala Graham and Micaja Etienne.
What is CV: Community Voices is a partnership between Stet News and Inlet Grove High School that trains and pays teens to cover the news. The Pew Family Fund and the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties generously support Community Voices.
Inlet Grove journalism teacher C.B. Hanif and Stet’s Carolyn DiPaolo contributed to this story.
