VIDEO: City Breaks Ground on New Fire Station

With a few shovel jabs into the ground, St. Louis Park city officials ceremoniously kicked off the process of replacing the two current fire stations with two new ones, which will be located in essentially the same spots.

Monday night's groundbreaking took place at . The station is set to be torn down in coming weeks, and firefighters there will shift to . That station's staff in turn will be relocated to the city's . In all, construction of the two new fire stations will cost roughly $15.5 million and take one year.

"This is kind of the start of one phase and the end of another for (St. Louis Park) fire stations," fire chief Luke Stemmer said Monday.

Indeed, the two current stations are from a different era. Built in the 1960s, Stemmer said the stations were not constructed to current Americans With Disabilities Act standards, nor did they originally have women's restrooms, as the female firefighter was not commonplace when they went up.

Structurally, the two stations are beginning to show their age, as the floors beneath the fire trucks started to crack years ago. Stemmer said steel was added as a reinforcement on several occasions.

Now, the chief said he is eagerly waiting the opening of the two new stations, which, despite being located in essentially the same locations as the buildings they're replacing, should be drastic improvements—the new stations will be three times larger and will feature state-of-the-art fire fighting equipment that the current stations can't support.

"We're pretty excited," Stemmer said. "We hope by this time next year to be moving into new stations."