[Scan-DC] Orange County breaks ground on $12.2 million public-safety facility

[Kenneth Fowler KD4IIW]

*ORANGE—*More than 30 years ago, most of the county’s emergency service
calls were dispatched by one person out of a radio room at the Orange
County Courthouse.

Last Tuesday afternoon, on an active construction site on Bloomsbury Road,
county officials joined law enforcement, emergency communications,
information technology and fire and rescue staff to “break ground” on the
county’s new $12.2 million public safety facility that’s expected to serve
the county’s needs for at least the next 20 years.

Orange County Emergency Communications Center Director and Public Safety
Systems Manager Dominique Curry said construction on the site began Jan. 7
and has a projected completion date of Sept. 4, 2020.

“This building represents the vision of a cohesive approach to public
safety for the citizens and visitors of Orange County,” she said, at
Tuesday’s program. The new 34,000-square-foot facility will house the
Orange County Sheriff’s Office, County of Orange Fire and EMS, Orange
County communications center and IT department, while providing a
state-of-the-art emergency operations center, future board of supervisors’
meeting room and training areas/community space.

“We truly are excited for the future of public safety and grateful to the
leadership of Orange County for making this all possible,” Curry said.

The center site includes 34 acres beyond the western edge of the Orange
County Airport purchased from Helen Marie Taylor for $850,000.

The building will feature single-story construction with one main public
entrance into a central lobby space that serves each of the building’s
tenants. The lobby, which has a distinctive rotunda feature, is separated
from the rest of the facility via access-controlled doorways. There are
customer service windows in the lobby for the sheriff’s office and fire and
EMS administration office, since those agencies anticipate the most public
interaction. Each entity would have a separate wing but would be connected
by a main hallway. That building plan also includes almost 9,000-square
feet of shared space.

Sheriff Mark Amos recounted a brief history of the evolution of the
county’s communications and sheriff’s office operations during his 32 years
with the county, beginning with the “radio room” anecdote.

In the 1980s, the sheriff’s office operated out of the Orange County
Courthouse and the abandoned former Orange County Rescue Squad station
behind it (where Wayne Modena’s State Farm office is now).

“Around 1990, when the Central Virginia Regional Jail opened, we moved our
offices from there to where we are now,” he said. “We had a staff of about
20 then. We have a staff of about 50 now.”

The “new” sheriff’s office included a dispatch center where two employees
dispatched all the county’s fire and EMS calls until a disagreement between
then-Sheriff Bill Spence and the board of supervisors in 1996 led to a
communications split. Law enforcement call dispatches remained at the
sheriff’s office, while fire and rescue calls were handled by a new
communications center in the basement of the Gordon Building.

Ten years later, having since outgrown its 1990 footprint, the sheriff’s
office received $15,000 in county funds to expand.

“We had a budget of $15,000 to put on a 30 x 36-foot addition,” Amos said.
“I knew there was no way we would get a contractor to take that job. I was
chief deputy at the time and volunteered to serve as the general contractor.


-- 

Kenneth
KD4IIW