Jonathan Damon and Melisa Perham stand in front of one of the Tupper Lake Volunteer Rescue Squad’s ambulances at their new headquarters in the old Bartel Motors building. (Enterprise photo — Ben Gocker)

TUPPER LAKE — The Tupper Lake Volunteer Ambulance and Rescue Squad is moving its headquarters from 49 High St. to the former Bartel Motors car dealership at 169 Main St. in the village’s Junction section.

The new location will provide direct access to state Route 3, a marked improvement from the squad’s former home.

“The old building was off a side street,” Chief Wayne LaPierre said. “Now we’re on a main drag, so we’re centrally located to go in either direction.”

With a few items left to move from their old headquarters, the transition is almost complete.

“We just have computers and accounting stuff to move down from the old place,” LaPierre said.

The dive team equipment, including rescue boats, was moved to the new location Wednesday.

In addition to improved access to a major thoroughfare, the new building is larger and more spacious.

“One of the big things here is that there’s more room for us to work,” EMT Jonathan Damon said. “There’s room for equipment. There’s room to work around stuff without having to move trucks around. There’s more room for storage. There’s more room to do training and stuff. It’s a lot more efficient than the old one.”

One of the biggest upgrades the new building offers is a sizeable garage for parking ambulances. In the new arrangement, each ambulance has its own bay.

“They’re side by side, whereas before they were back to back and side by side,” LaPierre said. “If an ambulance broke down (at the High Street location) blocking another vehicle, that was a big problem.”

EMT and driver Melissa Perham echoed the sentiment: “We just needed an update. We needed a new location. The vehicles were becoming newer, and it was becoming harder to keep up with what we needed.”

In the past year, the squad has purchased two new vehicles: a brand-new 2016 ambulance and a 2008 ambulance with 25,000 miles on it.

Though the former Bartel Motors building did not need the kinds of extensive repairs the High Street building needed, there was still renovation work to be done to make the space conform to the squad’s needs.

“The only thing we did was separate the main bedroom into two bedrooms. The upper floor is like a two-bedroom apartment now,” La Pierre said. “That’s where the EMTs sleep at night.”

Though staffing levels depend on the day, EMTs usually stay overnight on the premises every day of the week.

“There’s usually somebody always here during the day hours,” Damon said. “There is sometimes someone here at night. It depends on the day of the week. Some days we’ll have people here for 24 hours. Some days we’ll only have people here for half-shifts.”

The EMTs say they haven’t necessarily been seeing a new uptick in calls since they moved.

“It’s been about average,” Damon said. “Some days we get around two or three calls a day, and some days nothing. There was a day last week we had eight calls in a matter of four hours.”

LaPierre said the squad has tried to keep the moving costs reasonable, but expenses add up.

“Probably next month we’ll know how much the move cost,” he said. “With doing bedrooms and everything — buying paint, windows, moving radio equipment and installing the alarm system — we’re expecting the total could be about $11,000.”

The crew plans to invite the public to come tour the new headquarters once warm weather arrives.

“We’re talking about having an open house some time in May,'” LaPierre said. “Trying to get a bounce house for the kids, a barbecue, some music, show people the new building.”