Cedar Park - Far Northwest Austin Edition | July 2023

CITY & COUNTY

News from Cedar Park, Austin & Williamson County

Design begins for $30M safety training facility in Cedar Park BY CHLOE YOUNG

County to implement new approach for disaster response

BUILDING PLANS The new training facility will be located next to the Cedar Park Fire Department’s existing training tower, according to the city.

Emergency operations center

Homeland Security and Emergency Management. The facility will also serve as an emergency operations center for emergency management to utilize during emergencies and disasters, according to city documents. “This facility is planned to address the need for larger, dedicated training classrooms for all three entities and a permanent Emergency Operation Center,” said Fran Irwin, the city’s community affairs director. Diving in deeper: The 31,000-square-foot building will be located at 1200-1204 Fire Lane next to the fire department’s existing training tower and include an emergency operations center, classrooms, training spaces and more, said Caleb Stockton, the city’s senior project manager.

BY CHLOE YOUNG

CEDAR PARK City Council approved an architecture firm to design the city’s new Public Safety Training Facility at a June 22 meeting. “I think we’re all very excited about this public training facility,” Mayor Jim Penniman-Morin said. “We’ve all been committed to mak- ing sure we have the best public safety that our city possibly can.” Voters approved $30 million for the facility through the city’s 2022 bond program. Hoefer Welker, LLC will now design the facility through a contract with the city not to exceed $2.34 million. The breakdown: The Public Safety Training Facility will serve as a training site for the Cedar Park Police Department, Fire Department and Office of

WILLIAMSON COUNTY The county will begin using an opera- tional flood intelligence system to prepare for, respond to and recover from emergency floods. The big picture: County officials signed a contract with real-time flood intelligence company FloodMapp on June 6 after the Williamson County Commissioners Court approved the move in May. The contract enables Williamson County’s Office of Emergency Management to begin accessing FloodMapp’s ForeCast, NowCast and PostCast products, which document the extent of a flood before, during and after it takes place to help emer- gency responders and the public to take proper action in an emergency and streamline community recovery.

Classrooms

Meeting and training spaces

Equipment bays

Offices

EXISTING TRAINING TOWER

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SOURCE: CITY OF CEDAR PARK/COMMUNITY IMPACT

The construction timeline and potential opening dates for the facility will be determined at a later date, Irwin said.

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