M Focus on: Public Safety
Cities embrace public safety centers By BETH ANNE BRINK-COX | The Municipal
The public is used to thinking of firehouses, police departments and other city agencies as separate entities that serve and protect them through countless needs and issues. That’s the way it’s always been, but that doesn’t mean it must always be so. What if they only had to call one building for an emergency? In more and more cities, that’s the case. Shared spaces that house multiple public safety agencies are a growing trend. What’s the reasoning behind it? It’s really quite simple: EMS, firefighters and police routinely work together at crime scenes and during 30 THE MUNICIPAL | APRIL 2022
emergencies, but they don’t currently train together. With shared spaces, they can, and that can only benefit those who call for help no matter what the problem is.
ABOVE: Pictured is an architect’s rendering of the Bozeman Public Safety Center, looking very approachable. (Photo provided by the city of Bozeman)
Auburn, N.Y, chose to renovate an existing, empty building with the help of grants from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Climate Start Communities Program and further funds granted from the New York Department of State. This enabled the city to fully renovate a 17,800-square-foot vacant urban strip mall, adding a newly constructed apparatus bay to house the city’s fire department apparatus,
