Onondaga County wants to scrap its emergency operations center in downtown Syracuse and replace it with a larger, more secure building in the suburbs where officials would coordinate responses to disasters.
County Executive Ryan McMahon is asking for $1 million in federal aid to help convert the former U.S. Army Reserve Training Center at 420 Electronics Parkway in Liverpool into a new emergency operations center.
The existing center – in a sub-basement 24 ½ feet below the Onondaga County Civic Center – has operated since the 1990s. It’s equipped with a backup power generator, satellite phones and technology intended to keep critical government functions running in an emergency.
Last year, the county fully activated the center for the first time in two decades to coordinate the local response to the coronavirus pandemic. The center stayed open for more than 60 consecutive days at the height of the pandemic to deal with the public health emergency.
“That’s the longest it has ever been open,” McMahon said in an interview. “But this really isn’t the right location. It’s logistically not great. Think of all the bad things that could happen. You don’t want to consolidate all of your resources in one place.”
Most county government offices are in the same building, and the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Department and Syracuse Police Department headquarters are across the street.
“In an emergency, it’s probably not best practice to have your EOC with the rest of your operations,” McMahon said. He added, “If you have your law enforcement team stuck in a one-block radius, it’s not a good scenario.”
Rep. John Katko asked Congress in an April 28 letter for $1 million to pay for renovations and technology upgrades at the former Army Reserve Center on Electronics Parkway.
Katko, R-Camillus, made the request through the House Homeland Security Committee as part of a renewed practice that allows members of Congress to designate spending for projects in their home states or districts.
Katko wrote in his funding request that the existing emergency operations center is “susceptible to potential mechanical failures due to its location on the sub-level, and is immediately adjacent to other soft targets including primary county office buildings.”
McMahon said he expects the county would spend an additional $1 million matching any federal aid to renovate the former Army building on Electronics Parkway.
The Army had leased the building from the county until late last year, when it vacated the 6.4-acre property.
“It’s a nice piece of property that’s centrally located where we could have quick access,” McMahon said.
The move would allow the county to open a larger, more flexible operations center with state-of-the-art technology in a 17,500-square foot building, McMahon said.
The existing center occupies 11,100 square feet in the Civic Center.
The Electronics Parkway property also includes a six-bay detached vehicle maintenance garage and office area.
McMahon said the property could be expanded for other county uses, including a possible evidence facility for the sheriff’s department.
Until the coronavirus pandemic, the county’s existing emergency operations center hadn’t been fully activated since the Y2K crisis in 1999, when governments worldwide prepared for computer disruptions at the turn of the millennium.
The center also was fully activated after the Labor Day Storm of 1998, which caused widespread power failures and property damage across the county.
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