HALLOWELL — City Manager Nate Rudy said the city will probably hold off on paving Coos Lane on the Stevens Commons campus until construction is completed on the new fire station.

Construction on the fire station, which began in September, is on schedule and set to be completed in April.

“We want the fire station to get finished first, that way we don’t have construction vehicles driving back and forth over the new section of road,” he said.

The 5,300-square-foot station in Hallowell will include a chief’s office, a training room, a lounge and sleeping space, several bathrooms, a kitchen and a conference room. The garage will be 64 feet long and 56 feet wide with enough room for three modern firetrucks.

“The project is being managed very well and proactively,” Rudy said.

The construction is being funded by an anonymous donor who pledged up to $1 million in March and recently increased the donation to an unspecified amount. The city will not pay anything for construction, and the city hopes the station — being built on a parcel of land Stevens Commons owner Matt Morrill donated to the city — is finished before a major Water Street reconstruction project begins next April.

Infrastructure repairs and improvements to the road network at the 54-acre Stevens Commons campus is slightly behind schedule, Rudy said. The roads, and an 8-acre conservation area, were donated to the city by Morrill as part of the deal to fund the road work using $600,000 approved by voters in April in a $2.36 million bond package.

Paving the new Beech Street will begin in the next week or two, he said, and it should be finished by Thanksgiving, or at the end of the month, at the latest.

Some of the work in the project includes reclamation of existing pavement, tree clearing, installation of a water main, service connections and hydrants, installation of new sewer mains, service connections, manholes, and asphalt paving for roadway, sidewalks and curbing.

Morrill, of Grand View Log and Timber Frames in Winthrop, bought the property from the state for $215,000 in April 2016. He has said that improving the road network within Stevens Commons will make the property more attractive to outside developers, and he needs other developers to help him realize his vision of turning the campus into mixed-use development and a “centerpiece of Hallowell.”

In the 18 months since the acquisition, Morrill has done a number of below-the-surface infrastructure improvements, found six tenants to lease office space in the Baker Building, secured a commitment from Community Housing of Maine to convert the Central Building into housing for the elderly and reached a deal with the city to locate a new fire station on the site of the Farwell Building.

The conservation area on the north side of the campus will provide open space for the city forever, and it also gives people access to the Howard Hill Conservation Area, a 164-acre wooded tract in Augusta that is a backdrop to the Maine State House.

The work on for work on Outlet, Town Farm and Vaughan roads and Sunrise Drive in the rural part of Hallowell. Is nearly complete, Rudy said. Rudy said so far the city has spent about $375,000, well under the $575,000 allocated in the bond package approved by voters in April.

The agreement with the contractor, State Paving Inc., stated that the project must be substantially completed by Oct. 31, and the city would have received $250 per day for every day the contractor failed to complete the work by that date.

In addition, work continues on the current fire station on Second Street, where crews are shoring up the existing wooden structure, removing basement walls, installing new exterior basement-level doors, framing a new stair system from the basement to the first floor and adding new exterior wall framing to the basement level.

Jason Pafundi — 621-5663

jpafundi@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @jasonpafundiKJ