The massive, dome-shaped safe rooms are designed to withstand wind speeds up to 250 mph.
The total cost for both structures will be more than $2.5 million. The bulk of that funding will be paid by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. The city of Tupelo is responsible for just 10 percent of the costs.
The safe room at Theron Nichols Park will be 6,370 square-feet with a capacity of 1,102 people. The other safe room will be built at Dot Cooper Kelly Park in Lee Acres at the corner of Pierce Street and Lawndale Drive. It will have a capacity of almost 1,200 people inside the 6,800-square-foot dome.
The city was notified Friday that funds had been released for the first phase of the project, which includes architectural design and engineering.
When not serving as a storm shelter, the large buildings will serve other roles for the city. When Smithville built a similar safe room two years ago, they put it at the school and built the basketball court inside.
“We will have to have a work session with the city council to see what are the needs of the community, especially the needs of the two wards where they will be built,” said Tupelo Parks & Recreation Director Alex Farned. “I would be tickled to no end if we could have basketball in one of them. Right now, we are having to borrow gyms from the school system and the Police Athletic League just to run our basketball program.”
Other uses could include a community center with meeting rooms and classrooms.
The Lee Acres shelter would be close to the Pierce-Lawndale intersection. At Theron Nichols, the shelter would most likely be built to the west of the current park, in what now is woods.
The planning phase could take up to a year, putting construction and completion of the domes sometime in 2016.
©2014 the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal (Tupelo, Miss.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
