The development has begun for a $40 million emergency center in Dallas County.
The Emergency Operations Center is planned to have seats for more than 150 local emergency leaders, a multipurpose room for broadcasting news, and many screens available to display information, per KERA News.
The facility will be built in West Dallas. While the exact size of the building is still being planned, developers say that the total size will be comparable to Dealey Plaza, which is 15 acres.
A quarter of the building is planned to include vehicle bays and a service mezzanine. Additionally, the building will be next to a fire station.
The facility will be equipped to house displaced Dallas residents during emergencies, and will hold plenty of storage space and extended sleeping areas.
The majority of the building will be for emergency official leaders to prepare for, respond to and recover from natural disasters or other crises. The building will be equipped with the fastest available Internet fiber to ensure that weather radars, traffic cameras, and news channels can be accessed in the facility no matter the weather.
“The [emergency center] that we’re currently in is a retrofitted warehouse,” Dallas County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins said to KERA. “So it has no special ability to withstand natural disaster or manmade disaster.”
Dallas County required the facility to use low voltage systems and be Silver LEED certified, a certification that proves that projects took steps to minimize its environmental impact.
The single-story building will be made of solid concrete and is intended to withstand a F5-strength tornado. It is set to open next year.
Dallas has been ravaged by a string of severe weather this spring, resulting in thousands of power outages and tornado damage.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency opened three Disaster Recovery Centers in Dallas County for residents affected by storms over two months after the first round of storms tore through Dallas, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
It is unclear why the recovery centers were not opened up sooner.