VINEYARD — If Vineyard wants to be a city, it's going to have to start levying fees like one.

With the population poised to explode in the next 20 years, the once sleepy town west of Orem is planning for a public safety facility building and looking for ways to pay for it.

The Town Council recently proposed its first impact fees to offset the cost of building a fire station and police substation. Preliminary cost estimates for land acquisition and building are around $3.5 million.

The fees would be $1,690 per home and $1,690 per 2,500 square feet of nonresidential buildings, said Bruce Parker, Vineyard's town planner.

The town expects massive growth on the former Geneva Steel land — which is still being cleaned — as well as a huge housing boom. Two developments, The Homesteads at Vineyard and the Lakes at Sleepy Ridge, promise nearly 1,200 homes combined.

The creator of The Homesteads, Anderson Development, was required to build Vineyard a public safety facility or give it the money to build one. As fees are collected, some will be redirected back to Anderson, and the rest will collect in city coffers for future facilities or facility improvements, said Bruce Baird, an attorney for Anderson Development.

With all the growth, Vineyard's population is projected to hit almost 10,000 by 2030, a jump from the current close-knit group of 150 neighbors, according to Vineyard town documents.

"We recognize that (this building) is going to have to serve the community for a lot of years," said Kenny Nichols, principal architect with ASWN+.

With a police substation, training room, community meeting room and conference room, Nichols said they're trying to make the building as functional as possible for the entire community.

The town also wanted to preserve some of its agricultural history. Thus the interior of the 12,600-square-foot building with three firetruck bays was modeled after Orem's Fire Station No. 3, but the exterior looks like a stately farm building.

"The community has had a lot of agricultural activities in the past," Parker said. "We're quickly changing to very much of a residential and mixed-use community, but we still want to hark back and echo back to the history of the town."

Vineyard currently contracts with the Orem Fire Department and is still deciding how staffing will work in the future.

Construction could tentatively begin this summer, although much of it depends on how fast Anderson Development finishes the infra- structure, such as roads. Right now, the facility is planned for the middle of a field. Baird said hopefully they would begin construction by spring.

"There's no use building a building if there's no sewer or water or road system," Nichols said. "But hopefully that could happen by this summer, and we could follow right along with it. Best case scenario? Have this building operational by, oh, late 2007, early 2008."

---

E-mail: sisraelsen@desnews.com