Long-planned efforts to consolidate 911 dispatching in St. Louis are underway.
Public safety officials broke ground Thursday on a $45 million building in the city’s Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood. When it’s completed in 2026, dispatchers for the city’s police, fire and EMS services will all work from a central location.
“The creation of a central 911 dispatch center is a nationwide best practice that will improve public safety, decrease wait times and modernize the city's response capabilities,” said Mayor Tishaura Jones. “It’s going to be really exciting when this facility is done, and our residents are going to continue to get the services they deserve from our first responders.”
As recently as July 2023, the city was answering fewer than 60% of its 911 calls within 10 seconds, well below the national standard of 90% within 10 seconds. That performance has since improved to more than 80%, mostly due to increased staffing.
The new arrangement will help reduce 911 times even further, said Public Safety Director Charles Coyle. The building will have space for 44 workstations, up from 35 in two locations.
“So we’ll have more people sitting there to address your calls,” Coyle said. “And with our cross-training, we’ll be able to have people in positions that they normally would not have been in to make sure that we’re there when the citizens call for any type of emergency.”
Officials still need to work out a number of details, including getting current dispatchers cross-trained to answer all calls. Police and EMS dispatchers, who both work from police headquarters, are already learning how the other operates, but that training is optional.
In addition to the 911 dispatchers, the building will also house the headquarters of the City Emergency Management Agency, which has been in a temporary home on the 6th floor of the police building since 2014.
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It is harder to host outside groups in a space that is not your own, said CEMA Commissioner Sarah Russell, and that has made community partnerships more difficult.
“For a long time, we haven’t been able to host meetings and get into that rotation with our partners so that everyone is familiar with our space in case we need to call on them for assistance in a major incident,” they said.
The building will be constructed to withstand natural disasters like tornadoes and earthquakes. It will also have backup power and network connectivity, Russell said.
“We know in some of the other buildings, we’ve had to retrofit things,” they said.
The largest share of the project’s cost, about $27 million, will come from the city’s American Rescue Plan Act allocation. The state chipped in $10 million, and $1 million is from an economic development sales tax voters approved in 2017.
The remaining $6.8 million will be funded either by revenue left over from previous general obligation bonds or through the capital appropriations process.
FGM Architects, which has worked on 911 dispatch centers throughout Missouri and Illinois, designed the building. Kozeny Wagner is the general contractor.
