Police, fire station to be near airport; Catasauqua council picks 3-acre site for emergency building.
Catasauqua Borough Council on Monday designated 3 acres owned by Lehigh Valley International Airport as the favored site of its proposed emergency management building.
With Vice President Brian Bartholomew absent, council voted 6-2 to pick the airport land near 13th and Pearl streets, said Councilman Edward Neely, chairman of council's Public Safety Committee.
"Something has to be done and we decided that this was the time to do it," Councilman Paul Zimbar said.
Council also decided to reduce the borough's budget for the project from $3 million to $2 million, Neely said. Ending the debate over whether emergency agencies should have separate buildings, council decided that the center will house the departments of police, fire and emergency management, and the mayor's office.
The airport "didn't come right out and tell us that we have" the 13th and Pearl Street parcel, "but they made us believe that we do," Neely said. Airport officials could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
"I think it's great," said Catasauqua Police Chief Douglas Kish. Kish has said that he needs six times more space than he now has at the Police Department's current headquarters, in the borough municipal complex on Bridge Street.
As an alternate tract, council selected a section of borough-owned land off Walnut Street near the Suburban North Family YMCA, he said.
The airport tract at 13th and Pearl is adjacent to a borough-owned parcel that itself was once considered a site for the proposed center. But council decided it needs to set aside that land for residential development in order to make up for tax dollars it is losing through land acquisitions carried out by the airport.
The borough once considered a site on Front Street that would have included an existing structure. Burrows has said Front Street might not be wide enough to accommodate fire trucks leaving a headquarters located there.
The Fire Department needs new buildings because two of its current stations, Southwark and East End, are aging and not designed to support modern fire apparatus, Burrows has said. A third, Phoenix Fire Station, is newer but has inadequate floor area, he has said.
Burrows said he isn't familiar with the preferred tract. None of the parcels considered in the past "were my favorite sites," he said.
"But the borough's landlocked so we have to deal with what we have," he said.
Neely said the airport may ask the borough for some form of service in exchange for its land. The borough already assists the airport's police and fire departments, he said.
Kish said the proposal to house all of the agencies in the same building "has a lot of advantages."
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