PITTSBURGH – County Manager William D. McKain CPA announced today that the county has entered into a 20-year lease with the Allegheny County Airport Authority for the former US Airways Operations Center in Moon Township. The Department of Emergency Services, including the 9-1-1 Center, will be moving its operations and 300 staff to the facility. It is expected that the relocation and transition of operations will take 12-18 months to complete. As more definitive dates are available, the plan for transition and the move of the Center and department will be announced in detail.
“With the interest by the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh in developing the North Lexington site, the opportunity to move and select a new facility also allowed the county to advance our 9-1-1 operations and capacity,” said McKain. “By selecting an existing facility that is relatively designed and built for large volume call operations, although some new construction will be needed, the department will be able to build out new technology and improve interoperability in the region. Had we
needed to retrofit another building, or build a new facility, the investment could have been tens of millions of dollars.”
Currently, the department inhabits 48,137 sq.ft. at the Lexington Technical Park at an average cost of $533,822.04. The new facility, at 150 Hookstown Grade Road, will provide 67,390 sq.ft. of space with an annual rent of $1,053,979.60, some of which will be offset through shared services with the airport. The additional space will allow for expansion if any of the 13 municipalities or agencies that are not currently being handled by the center choose to transition to the county’s system.
“Allegheny County’s 9-1-1 Center is the busiest center by volume, and has the most complex operations and communications systems in the Commonwealth,” said Chief Matt Brown, Director of Emergency Services. “We currently serve 95 police agencies, 169 fire departments and 40 emergency medical service agencies. Due to that complexity, we need to have a facility that ensures we have the capability to be operational every hour of every day, which both facilities meet, but can also expand and contract to respond to Allegheny County incidents, as well as regional incidents within southwestern Pennsylvania.”
The Hookstown site will provide a sole tenant opportunity that provides increased security, as well as improved management and operation of the facility. Because the facility is newer than their current location, the utilities and the structure are more state of the art and designed for operations such as the 9-1-1 Center, greatly reducing the build out costs that would be necessary for any other site. The department has received grant funds to assist with the relocation of operations and replacement of technology, and is also investigating grant opportunities for additional technology improvements.
The Airport Authority purchased the facility in January 2016 for $1.87 million from American Airlines, following the decision by the airline to consolidate its flight operations activities in Texas.
