Emergency Ops Center Choices Narrowed

Wednesday rejected three of five potential sites for their new emergency operations center. 

One of the two surviving sites is the county-owned property at 1301 Cattlemen Road, at the eastern terminus of Bahia Vista Street. The second is a property at 7060 Professional Parkway in Lakewood Ranch, south of University Parkway.

The county issued a “request for information” in September, soliciting potential sites for the multi-million dollar facility, which will also house the 911 call center. Four properties were officially presented and evaluated, along with the county-owned site.

County staffers used a variety of criteria to evaluate the potential sites, which need excellent transportation connections.

• The site must be two exits from Interstate 75 within five miles and within a mile of public transportation.
• It cannot be located next to dense vegetation or high trees.
• The parcel size needs to be a minimum of five acres.
• Because it must fully operational in extreme weather, the site must not lie in a 100-year flood zone, or the evacuation zone of any hurricane (including Category 5 storm surge).
• It must have two separate physical connections to the county’s data center with a 10 gigabit capacity, and zoned to accept a 150-foot tall antenna.

Carolyn Eastwood with public works prepared a matrix showing how each of the five properties rated on the criteria. The county-owned site at 1301 Cattlemen Road passed every criteria. Another site at 100 Cattlemen Road also passed every criteria.

The matrix shows the other finalist – Professional Parkway – did not have two I-75 exits within five miles, had no public transportation within a mile, was smaller than five acres and would not currently allow a 150-foot antenna tower.

Commissioner Joe Barbetta noted that the 100 Cattlemen site is under environmental remediation, and suggested it be pulled from the list.

Commissioner Jon Thaxton said a Lockwood Ridge Road site would face strong neighborhood resistance, and the Beneva Road site would require significant changes in land-use and zoning.

Thaxton moved that the county-owned site at 1301 Cattlemen and the Professional Parkway site be the finalists. The motion was approved, 4-0, with Commission Chair Nora Patterson recusing herself from the vote because the owner of the Professional Parkway property is a long-time client of her husband’s law firm.

The Professional Parkway site is about 12 miles southeast of Manatee County’s new emergency operations center, near Samoset.