After a year and a half of construction, the Boynton Beach Fire Station No. 5 will have its grand opening Oct. 10 with a few added touches of class.

The new fires station and emergency operation center will stand at
 2080 High Ridge Road, by Gateway Boulevard and Interstate 95.


Dana Donaty Designs in Delray Beach created an acrylics on canvas custom installation of
 four firefighting vehicles from 80 years of history for the main lobby of the new station. Dana Donaty said the mural was 4 feet by 19 feet and was titled “Big Red.”

Donaty said the mural only took one day to install and that the landscape background of the piece is from a historical 1930 Boynton Beach photograph of Federal Highway.

Donaty said there are replicas for sale at www.DanaDonaty.com or by calling 561-504-3374.

“They decided that they needed another art component at the station, so they saw samples of my past work and like them,” she said.

Donaty is known for her work in downtown Delray Beach, especially a large mural on the outside wall of an old camera shop.

“They saw my body of work and decided on me,” she said. “I’m going to say from start to finish it took two months but I had other projects I was working on in between.”

Steve Lewis, spokesman for the Boynton Beach Fire Rescue, said the operations center aspect of the building is a gigantic step into the future for the city.

“We received a $1.7 million Hazard Mitigation grant to harden the building to category 5 status,” he said. “This is the first building in Boynton to have this rating.”

Lewis said that if something were to happen to City Hall, 100 E. Boynton Beach Blvd., with the flip of a switch, dispatch functions would not miss a beat. In addition, there are backup ITS servers in the new building to also backup City Hall.

The 42,000 square-foot building took about a year and a half to finish at a total cost of almost $9 million.

Mike Rothman can be reached at mkrothman@tribune.com.