BY MATT MACKINDER
Clarkston News Staff Writer

After almost 20 years, the 5255 Maybee Road building will once again be in the ambulance business after $50,000 of renovations are completed.
Independence Township Board voted unanimously, Feb. 18, to approve the upgrades and a five-year lease agreement between the township and Medstar to provide non-emergency ambulance service.
Independence Township Fire Department is the primary Emergency Medical Service agency for the community – Medstar will take some of the non-emergency ambulance runs, said ITFD Chief Mitch Petterson.
The Maybee Road building was built in the late 1960s and used by the fire department until 2002, when the new Station Three was built on adjacent property. The 5255 building was converted into a Comcast public access cable station, and used as such until 2013, when the Independence Television cable station moved to Clarkston High School.
“We’ve used it for some opportunity to train inside and some things like that, but by and large, the building is vacant,” said Independence Township Fire Chief Mitch Petterson.
The township began providing advanced life support ambulance service there in 2002. With Independence and other townships providing ALS ambulance services, private providers moved out of the area, Petterson said.
“At this point, we have a pretty significant lack of private EMS ambulances available to us here in North Oakland County, not just in Independence Township, but across North Oakland County,” he said.
The new agreement would have the private provider making non-emergency transports, and the township would provide the emergency runs to 911 callers. In addition, the private provider would also provide the township a layer of mutual aid as backup, said Petterson.
“As we look forward, we have hundreds and hundreds of beds coming here in the township. So really, what we’re doing now is we’re providing mutual aid to them more often. We see calls nearly every day that really are not emergency runs, but the response time from the private providers outside of what the facilities want, so they either call 911, or the private provider pushes the call to us through the 911 system once it enters the system like that. That run belongs to us. There’s nothing we can do. We have to go. We have to respond.”
Adding the additional private EMS units from Medstar to North Oakland County at the Maybee Road location will relieve the department of some of that congestion and “put that back in balance,” Petterson said.
“In discussion with them because we have a mutual aid agreement with them, we discovered they were looking to move into this side of the county, put some more private ambulances here,” said Petterson. “We have that building that’s available and with a little bit of work will be suitable for what they’re looking to do, so they’d like to lease that base.”
The lease agreement is for $16 per square foot, and would include site renovations, a $500 monthly utility allowance, as well as outdoor maintenance (lawn mowing, snow plowing), which is currently provided by the fire department itself. It was also noted that if Medstar cancels this contract at any time between the point of signing and five years after that, the company would compensate the township for those lost months.
“It’s kind of a no-lose situation for us,” said Independence Township Supervisor Pat Kittle.
Renovations include interior repairs, parking bays, and garage doors.
“It’ll certainly be much more useful with bay doors on it. Right now, it’s a big square made of block. It’s got entry doors, and that’s it. There’s plenty of indoor space.”
“One good thing about this, too, is if Medstar cancels this, we’ll have an improved building that pretty much got paid for through this rental,” added Trustee Ron Ritchie. “If nothing else, it’ll be more functional for the fire department.”
All revenue (rental income) will stay in the fire department fund, said Petterson.