Work Set to Begin on New St. Louis 911 Dispatch Center
Date Posted: October 17, 2024
Posted In: Projects,
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Construction on a new 911 dispatch call center, mulled by St. Louis leaders for nearly two decades, will finally begin next week, city officials said Wednesday.
The city issued a $28 million building permit last week for the site at 2741 Thomas Street, just west of the Fire Department headquarters on North Jefferson Avenue. Jamella Brown, a spokeswoman for the public safety department, confirmed that groundbreaking on the 17,000-square-foot facility is scheduled for Oct. 24.
Construction is scheduled to be complete on the new center, which officials are calling a “public safety access point,” in the fourth quarter of 2026.
A combined dispatch center to house police, fire and EMS dispatchers under one roof has been a goal of city leaders across mayoral administrations. The city’s disjointed 911 dispatch system has long been called out as inefficient — police dispatchers answer all calls and then must decide whether to route medical emergencies to EMS dispatchers or fires to fire dispatchers. And the different dispatchers have historically worked from different locations.
Combining the 911 dispatch functions was one of Mayor Tishaura O. Jones’ earliest initiatives, but it stalled amid issues with rigid civil service rules and differing union contracts and pay rates for fire, police and EMS dispatchers.
The system’s inefficiencies became impossible to ignore in July 2023, when severe storms caused a tree to fall on Katherine Coen, who later died as nearby witnesses tried without success to get through to a dispatcher on the city’s 911 system.