READFIELD — The town is revisiting plans for an addition to its 1978 fire station.

Residents approved a $625,000 addition at the June 2010 Town Meeting, but that is not the project being considered now.

“It passed, on the condition that the National Guard would be involved in helping to build it so that the costs would be reduced,” Town Manager Stefan Pakulski said. “If the Guard was not going to be able to do it, then the town would have to bring it back to town meeting.”

The timing ended up not being right for the National Guard to provide engineering services, and there was a change in leadership at the fire department, with Lee Mank succeeding Matt Dunn as chief.

Mank thought the plan that residents had approved did not include enough storage space, so he talked with firefighters about the department’s needs and worked with the architect to create a new plan.

The 34 senior and six junior firefighters have to attend regular training sessions, Mank said.

“It’s basically classroom stuff that we have to do, and right now we don’t really have a proper place for that,” he said. “Right now, we pull a truck out and we meet in the apparatus bay.”

The 4,236-square-foot fire station has three bays and an office.

The addition would add 3,612 square feet, with a storage bay, meeting room, sleeping quarters for ambulance staff and a kitchen and dining room. It would cost about $500,000.

The department has five fire trucks, a boat and a 1952 fire engine used only in parades. The storage bay would house the old engine and other equipment, making it easier to get the operational trucks into and out of the station.

The new floor plan includes less meeting space than the previous one. The addition had been intended to provide space for community use, but Mank said there are other facilities in town for that, such as Gile Hall.

Mank said he tried to plan ahead, as the department did when constructing the existing station.

“They built it with the foresight to see where Readfield Fire Department would be in 1990 or 2000 and included some extra space,” Mank said. “We tried to do the same thing. We want to make the station function for another 40 or 50 years.”

The Board of Selectmen want to include the addition in their capital improvement plan for next year, but it probably won’t come up for a decision by residents until town meeting in June.

If it turns out the National Guard can help with the project, that would have to happen in June, meaning town officials would have to call a special town meeting this spring, Pakulski said.

Susan McMillan — 621-5645

smcmillan@mainetoday.com