Two months after the parties agreed in principle to an arrangement that would have brought a new fire station to the Prairie Village municipal complex, the project has been sidelined.

Assistant City Administrator Wes Jordan told the Prairie Village City Council on Monday that after weeks of discussions with Consolidated Fire District No. 2 about its needs for the new station, the parties had agreed that a workable solution wasn’t in the offing.

“After numerous meetings with their staff, our staff, a team of architects, our city planner, it became soon apparent that they simply needed more space for the size of the structure to fit their needs,” Jordan said.

Initially, the fire department had been looking to build a two-story structure on the site. But when architects began sketching out plans and estimating costs, it became clear that a two-story building would have been cost prohibitive. As a result, the city and the department began exploring single-story building options, but those proved to be too disruptive to the city’s existing parking lot and traffic flow.

“They are going back to the drawing board,” Jordan said, noting that they had expressed plans to reevaluate the site at 90th Street and Roe Avenue where their current aging station sits.

News of the abrupt end to the collaborative effort that began last fall upset at least one member of the council. Ted Odell told Jordan that he felt the fire department should have had a better sense of the costs of the structure it was proposing before bringing the proposal as far along as it did.

“I’m personally very disappointed in the process,” Odell said. “It seems like it wasted a lot of time, not just staff time, but council time.”

Mayor Laura Wassmer told Odell that the department had not been able to accurately estimate the cost of a two-story structure until it engaged an architect.

“Until they got the architect involved and they got real costs, they didn’t know,” Wassmer said.