Jackson County commissioners approved a contract with ORW Architecture of Medford Wednesday for design of a regional multi-use facility at The Expo to be operated by county officials in times of emergency.

The facility will serve as a multi-use emergency response center for Jackson County to house emergency operations during large-scale incidents such as fires or public health emergencies.

The city of Central Point also will utilize a portion of the facility for a community center.

Commissioners OK’d spending of $3.8 million for the design portion of the estimated $56 million project.

City officials this week will review a contract authorizing the city to fund 30%, or $1.1 million, of design costs.

Commissioner Dave Dotterer said the project was a win for the community.

“It’s a wonderful project, much needed, and the great thing about it is it will be multi-use. It will be principally used as a pandemic center, but it will also be available for use by The Expo for events and also available through a partnership with the city of Central Point as their community center,” he said.

The project will be built on land now used for overflow parking between The Expo amphitheater and the Family Fun Center.

The project would serve a long list of uses, including “vaccination, testing, non-congregate sheltering, provision of food to those impacted by the pandemic, for general health needs that result from pandemic conditions, as an emergency operations center and for personal protective equipment storage and distribution,” Deputy County Administrator Shannon Bell said.

Central Point Public Works Director Matt Samitore said the city would fund a portion of the project design, but if costs are outside the scope of what the city is expecting, it could opt out.

As users of the facility, Central Point would be under a long-term lease with flexibility built in. Samitore said the final project budget would have much to do with the city’s participation.

“The city has a hard number of around $15 million. We can’t really go beyond that,” he added.

After recent fires and the pandemic, County Administrator Danny Jordan said, a facility to adequately shelter people in any type of emergency is sorely needed. Following the Almeda Fire, thousands of people were without shelter for extended periods of time, and local hotels and emergency shelters were strained beyond capacity.

“One of the things we dealt with during COVID was we didn’t have an indoor facility where we could administer vaccines or house people. When we had the fires, we had nursing homes just show up and drop people off,” Jordan said.

“The first night I was there, at two in the morning somebody said, ‘We need 100 oxygen tanks.’ We had people in wheelchairs who needed catheters. … We were setting people up in our buildings. … It just became apparent that we did not have adequate facilities for use during those large-scale emergencies.”

Jordan said architectural designs should wrap up within four months, then the project would go out to bid.

“We could start building before the end of the year,” Jordan said. “And it would likely take the full year to build it, putting us through at least the end of 2024.”