Camden restarts design of new emergency operations and backup 911 center

The Camden County Board of Commissioners on Oct. 6 approved extending its design and engineering contract with McCall Architecture for a new emergency operations center and backup 911 center, restarting a project that had been on hold while the county decided where to build it.

The board awarded the contract in February 2025. According to the meeting packet, the extension runs until Oct. 31, 2028, and the price of the project stays the same. Voters approved $4.1 million for the building in 2019 as part of SPLOST 8, the county's special purpose local option sales tax.

A county emergency management official, presenting the item in place of the purchasing officer, said the county has settled on its long-preferred site at 135 Gross Road in Kingsland, a 4.8-acre property known as the Rock, next to the county's Resiliency Operations Center. He said about $6.5 million in federal money has been invested in that complex. He said keeping emergency operations and disaster recovery work in the same place matters for a small emergency management staff, and that building there would move faster than waiting for the county's planned public safety complex.

Commissioners asked about backup 911 equipment recently installed at a county substation. The official said the substation was always meant to be temporary and that the equipment will move to the new center. He said the current emergency operations center at 131 N. Lee St., a converted post office, was not built to withstand a major hurricane, and that the board will decide later what to do with that property.

He said construction would likely take about 12 months once a building contract is awarded. A commissioner noted that the building is one of the last SPLOST 8 projects left to finish. The motion to approve the extension carried.