The city of Brookhaven has finished renovations of a former QuikTrip gas station building on Buford Highway that is expected to become a new DeKalb County ambulance station.
City and county officials along with representatives from American Medical Response, the county’s current contracted ambulance provider, recently toured the building at 3292 Buford Highway. AMR is now going through the process of outfitting it with the equipment it needs to make a new EMS post for at least three ambulances, according to Brookhaven City Manager Christian Sigman.
DeKalb County said in a statement there is no timeline for when the station will be occupied.
Brookhaven finalized the purchase of the QuikTrip in October for $1.7 million and agreed to renovate the building for approximately $180,000 so it could be used as an ambulance posting. As part of the agreement, the county is expected to pay back the $180,000 through a lease agreement. That lease agreement has not yet been finalized.
Brookhaven originally purchased the QuickTrip to gain a foothold on the redevelopment of Buford Highway, but agreed to partner with the county to put ambulances on the property to try to improve ambulance response times in Brookhaven as well as Dunwoody and northern DeKalb County.
Brookhaven’s partnership with DeKalb County and AMR to put ambulances on Buford Highway is a vast different response than the city of Dunwoody, which has complained for years about AMR’s slow response times there. Dunwoody sought to create a separate EMS zone from DeKalb, but state authorities have not agreed to do so.
AMR’s original contract with the county expired at the end of 2018, but the contract has been extended twice as the county needed more time to come up with a new request for proposal and more time to review the companies that submitted bids: AMR, Grady EMS and PatientCare Logistics Solutions.
The current contract extension was supposed to end Sept. 30, but county officials say they expect another contract extension through the end of this year to be approved.
“Due to important business and legal matters that need to be concluded in the pending procurement for a new contract, this extension is being considered,” the county said in a written statement.