LANESBOROUGH — Jen Weber has memories of eating breakfast at Biggins Diggins while on shift as EMS director of Lanesborough Ambulance.

Now she’s eating breakfast, lunch and dinner and spending the night twice a week at the site of the former restaurant — which is the new home for Lanesborough Ambulance.

“It was hard to imagine,” she said of her initial thought of using the former restaurant as headquarters for her team shortly after Biggins Diggins closed.

EMS Director Jen Weber, shown with the ambulance in the garage built behind Lanesborough Ambulance's new quarters. It allows a drive-thru feature so drivers do not have to back into the ambulance bay.

But landlord Steven Psutka agreed to do all the renovations necessary for the transformation, including adding bunk rooms, building a new bathroom and retrofitting the kitchen.

Starting after Thanksgiving, the crew spent time in the new quarters setting up furniture and preparing it, but the final move came last week.

On Wednesday, Weber gave The Eagle a tour of the space at Lanesboro Plaza at 545 South Main St. It's in the same complex as the police station, and less than a mile south of the Lanesborough Fire Station in Route 7, where the ambulance crew didn’t have bunks.

Weber hopes having spiffy new digs will help attract and retain EMT’s — just as its new ambulance did in 2022.

“Retention is an issue, mostly because of their age,” she said. “Now at least this is their space.”

She said the EMTs have already demonstrated “station pride.”

The headquarters has separate bunk rooms, each available to one person, along with a day room outfitted with a butcher block table, a couch and two recliners, and a full kitchen with new Whirlpool appliances. Weber also has an office.

Like Big Blue, the name for Lanesborough’s ambulance, the color scheme of the cabinetry is a dark slate blue.

There are two half-baths and that new full bathroom, along with a washer and dryer, per state regulations.

Weber began hunting tag sales and store sales for furnishings and equipment months ago. She appreciated that Raymour & Flanigan in Pittsfield stored the recliners and couch. She snagged bar stools from a tag sale. The butcher block table was a donation. She got a Black Friday deal on the range, refrigerator and dishwasher — and a deep discount as she was buying for an emergency services agency.

“I’ve been frugal,” she said.

The ambulance is garaged behind the building, tucked into a single-bay garage built from a kit. It’s a pull-through with an electric door on either end.

Still, she made sure to include a shower curtain in the standing shower with a depiction of an ambulance.

The ambulance is garaged behind the building, tucked into a single-bay garage built from a kit. It’s a pull-through with an electric door on either end.

Now that Weber has moved into the new quarters with bunks, she’s also begun staffing overnights with a more attractive pay scale — at the same rate EMTs work other shifts, $24.

To implement this new pay scale, she estimates it will cost anywhere from $59,000 to about $90,000, depending on the amount of overtime shifts. That’s for the six months from January through June, the end of the current fiscal year.

Two years ago, Weber initiated a stipend system for those working the overnight shift — the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift — a stipend of $50 plus $40 per call.

Anyone agreeing to work overnight needed to be within six minutes of the fire station. Some slept on the couches in that station when working the shifts.

When she set that up, there were staff available who lived in town and could respond within that timeframe. Since then, that staffing dried up, leaving her as the only local employee.

In addition, she explained that most employees of Lanesborough Ambulance also work for other agencies, including Northern Berkshire Ambulance and County Ambulance, where the overnight pay rate is at least $20 per hour.

That outpaced Lanesborough’s rate.

When Lanesborough Ambulance implemented overnight service in 2022, there were 79 overnight calls. In 2025, up to Dec. 22, there were 104 calls, an increase of 32 percent.

Overall in 2025, Lanesborough Ambulance logged about 780 calls, also an increase over prior years.

When Lanesborough Ambulance was at the fire station, there were no bunks.

On overnight shifts, that meant it took eight minutes from dispatch to rolling the ambulance.

Now, that time gap is about two minutes.

“It’s a huge difference,” Weber said. “And when you’re talking about calls like cardiac arrest or choking, those are calls where we don’t have that time.”