- Sandy unveiled a new 22,200 square foot public works garage Wednesday.
- The new garage features 40-foot bays, a 10-ton crane, and seven service lanes.
- The city's old facility was burned by a fire in 2017; the fire sparked the overhaul of the garage.
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, that guy is Tom Arnold.
"I just turned 72," said Arnold with a smile.
He's been working as a mechanic for Sandy 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 the process of, 'This is something to do now,'" said Sandy Public Works Director Ryan Kump. "'(We're) out of space.'"
After years of planning and funding, Sandy 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 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 retirement is something he has been threatening for years.
"(Everybody's) betting that I will," he said, laughing. "Yeah, they've taken care of me. I can't complain."
The new facility might just cause him to stay a little bit longer.
