New Pittsburgh public safety campus coming to former Veterans Affairs medical facility

PITTSBURGH — The City of Pittsburgh is poised to move forward with the development of an all-encompassing public safety campus in Lincoln-Lemington.

This comes after nearly seven years of planning and work with the federal government.

The new campus will be located at the old Veterans Affairs medical facility on Highland Drive, which closed in 2013 and was recently purchased by the city from the U.S. government for $1.

“We saw it as an opportunity to put together our public safety services that are scattered all throughout the city and to be able to place it in one location and to be able to coordinate services in a much more effective and efficient manner,” said Mayor Bill Peduto on Friday as he announced the city will relocate all fire, EMS and police training academies and headquarters from their current locations to the new Highland Drive campus.

Some of the buildings currently on the sprawling 170-acre campus will be demolished and rebuilt. Others will be refurbished. Some funding is already in place, and the completed project will save the city nearly $2 million a year in rent.

“Having all these centers that we have to rent and that we have to pay for, and then we look at this opportunity to acquire this land for $1 and we look at the impact not just for today but for the next administration to utilize this,” said Peduto.

The new unified public safety location aims to offer improved training opportunities as well as cross-training for all police, fire and EMS workers.

Some of that training is already underway, according to Wendell Hissrich, the city’s public safety director.

“They’ve already used it for different scenarios, whether it be putting ladders up against the building, running hoses, using it for tactical situations or even the old elevators in here,” said Hissrich.

Moving operations away from the city’s public safety center on Washington Boulevard will also allow public works to fix the flood problem along that stretch of road.

“[It’s] an area that floods to the point that it takes human life,” said Peduto. “And we know that we can solve it through green solutions, through green stormwater solutions, but it requires removing all of those buildings along the roadway.”

The project is expected to take several years to complete, but the city hopes to begin construction next year.

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