Sandy City unveils new fleet maintenance garage after 2017 fire burned old facility

SANDY — In just about every garage, there’s that one guy, the one who’s seen it all, fixed it all and can still laugh about it.

In Sandy City, that guy is Tom Arnold.

“I just turned 72,” said Arnold with a smile.

He’s been working as a mechanic for Sandy City for 37 years.

“Because I like the people I work with,” Arnold said. “I’ve got the greatest bosses.”

But in 2017, everything stopped.

A four-alarm fire tore through the city’s 40-year-old maintenance building, destroying the garage and nearly everything inside, including several snowplows.

“And I thought, really, what are we going to do now,” Arnold recalled.

For a while, they made it work by setting up in temporary spaces, fixing city vehicles wherever and however they could, even outside without any covering.

But the fire, city officials said, ultimately sparked a much-needed overhaul of the city’s vehicle maintenance system.

“The fire really forced and kick-started some of the process of, ‘This is something we have to do now,’” said Sandy Public Works Director Ryan Kump. “We were out of space.”

After years of planning and funding, Sandy City finally unveiled a brand-new 22,200 square foot public works garage on Wednesday.

It features 40-foot-tall bays, a 10-ton crane and seven pull-through lanes capable of servicing 14 vehicles at once.

It’s an investment in efficiency, safety and cost-savings, especially with a fleet of more than 750 vehicles that includes everything from fire trucks to lawnmowers.

“We would be charged probably $7 million to $8 million a year to keep our fleet going if we had to send our vehicles out,” said Sandy Mayor Monica Zoltanski. “Now, we can do it all here.”

The new facility is built with concrete sandwich panels, each weighing up to 170,000 pounds.

It’s a method city leaders said helped bring costs down significantly while improving durability.

The city marked the grand opening with a ribbon cutting and public open house, inviting residents to explore the new garage and check out the large city trucks on display.

Arnold walked through it all slowly, taking it in.

After nearly four decades of doing this job, the space means more to him than most.

“It doesn’t feel like we’re on top of each other anymore,” he said.

He’s set to retire in five months, even though his co-workers will joke that retirement is something he has been threatening for years.

“And everybody is betting that I will,” he said, laughing. “Yeah, they’ve taken good care of me. I can’t complain.”

The new facility might just cause him to stay a little bit longer.

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