A new emergency operations center in northwest Dallas broke ground on Monday that will include a warehouse, storm shelter, and around 200 parking spaces.
The nearly 40,000-square-foot facility across the highway from Dallas Love Field Airport will cost around $40 million in taxpayer money and take around 20 months to complete. The facility will serve as the center for the county’s emergency communications.
“We chose this site because we want to be slightly out of the Central Business District because the City of Dallas’ EOC is there. And if something were to happen to the Central Business District, then we would need to have a functioning EOC. We want to be close enough to the Central Business District and Downtown because all the roads go through there. And it’s easy for us from this location to get anywhere in the county,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said during the groundbreaking, per Fox 4.
Jenkins further stated that the facility will have space for personnel from each of the county’s 26 cities and will improve communication.
The storm shelter will be able to withstand an EF-5 tornado or a storm that can produce winds of more than 260 miles per hour.
“We’re going to be able to coordinate with our cities and our partners to respond and recover from disasters in a building that will be second to none,” Scott Forster, Dallas County chief of emergency services, said during the groundbreaking, reported Newsbreak.
Currently, Dallas County’s emergency operations center is located at a multi-use facility at 2121 Panoramic Cir., per the Dallas Business Journal.
The new site was purchased in November 2022 for about $6.4 million.