A 51-year-old piece of Saskatoon’s Sutherland neighbourhood is set to close.

The Saskatoon Fire Department announced plans Thursday to relocate Fire Station No. 5.

The fire hall has operated on Central Avenue since 1966, but as the city’s population has more than doubled since it was built, the fire department wants to move it closer to the intersection of Preston Avenue and College Avenue.

“What we want everyone to understand about the new service model is that it’s aimed at increasing safety and decreasing overlap between stations,” Chief Morgan Hackl said in a media release.

Hackl went on to promise that, if anything, emergency services in the areas served by the current fire hall would be improved after the move.

The fire department will ask council for $8.79 million in the 2018 budget for the move.

The new No. 5 station will be built somewhere in the University of Saskatchewan-owned College Quarter development. An exact location will be announced once plans are finalized.

Come-and-go information sessions will be held Nov. 7 from 6-8:30 p.m. at Sutherland school and on Nov. 9 from 6-8:30 p.m. at the Saskatoon Field House.

In the meantime, Fire Station No. 3 is set to complete its move from the intersection of Taylor Street and York Avenue to a new spot on Clarence Avenue South sometime in the summer of 2018.

That move was meant to adjust the fire department’s coverage in such a way that building a new fire hall in Stonebridge was no longer necessary, saving $6 million in construction costs and a further $3 million-a-year in operating costs.