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Hamilton County is preparing to move forward with plans to construct a three-story, 108,000-square-foot 911 dispatch and emergency operations center in Noblesville Township.
The $85 million Hamilton County Public Safety Center will be built on 22 acres east of State Road 37 and north of State Road 38 in the 18100 block of Presley Drive. Members of the Noblesville City Council last week voted 9-0 to approve a zoning change for the public safety center.
Hamilton County Commissioner Christine Altman told councilors that the facility will house 911 dispatchers, an emergency operations center, training areas, storage and possibly a child-care area.
“It’s a pretty building. It’s a big building,” she said. “It will hold dispatch, hopefully, for the next 50 years.”
Reflecting ponds in the front of the building will act both as a decorative feature and a safety barrier for the Hamilton County Public Safety Center, which Altman called “a highly secured public safety facility.”
“I lovingly call them our bunkers. We have a nice water feature in front, but we’ve designed it very carefully with respect to security and access,” she said. “So, it’s got really pretty reflecting ponds in front, but you would have to be crazy to drive through them.”
Construction is expected to begin in July and last about 26 months. The facility will be funded by a 0.1% public service local income tax that went into effect four years ago.
City and town councils representing more than 50% of Hamilton County’s population voted in fall 2019 to overhaul funding for the county’s Public Safety Center. Rather than rely on communities to pay a fee proportionate to their dispatch calls, as was the practice at the time, the county now collects more in income taxes.
The Hamilton County Commissioners agreed to a build-operate-transfer agreement with Columbus, Ohio-based DLZ to design the facility, Fishers-based engineering consultant RQAW Corp., Fishers-based Envoy Construction Services to build it and Indianapolis-based BW Construction as an owner’s representative.
A build-operate-transfer agreement—which was authorized by a 2017 state law—is a form of public-private partnership that shifts the burden of cost overruns to a developer.
Hamilton County’s 911 dispatchers and emergency management employees currently work in the basement of the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department at 18100 Cumberland Road in Noblesville.
The center’s employees dispatch police, fire and emergency personnel from 17 agencies, covering 398 square miles.
“We’re at capacity,” Altman said. “So, if county council gave us additional dispatchers, we wouldn’t have a place to put them.”
Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified the designer of the project. The designer is Columbus, Ohio-based DLZ. You can see all of our corrections here.
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The architects are DLZ, Indiana LLC not RQAW.