Raleigh breaks ground on new public safety center
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- Raleigh broke ground on a new public safety center Thursday.
It was going to be a much larger and much more expensive building, but the city council was divided over the cost for that, so they opted for a scaled down version.
The new public safety center will cost around $71 million, as opposed to the nearly $200 million price tag for the original plan. The building will be four stories and will house the Raleigh Wake emergency communications center, the City of Raleigh emergency operations center, along with traffic and data centers for the city.
The 95-thousand square foot building is also designed to withstand hurricanes and tornadoes with winds up to 140 miles per hour and it will have a backup power system to ensure the facility never goes dark.
The building itself is expected to open by January 2016.
