Planning for a proposed multiuse training facility on the Broad Mountain in Nesquehoning is moving forward.

On Tuesday, Carbon County Planning Commission voted to recommend conditional preliminary plan approval for the Carbon County Emergency Operations and Training Center, which will be located on the grounds around the current Emergency Management Agency.Ivan O. Meixell Jr., county planner, said that plans call for constructing a 29,045.50-square-foot emergency operations and training center building, two parking areas with 69 spaces, a 1,600-square-foot law enforcement training building, 400-square-foot observation tower, 1,820-square-foot firefighter's training building, 924-square-foot firefighter's training tower, a storage building, concrete burn pad for class A combustible materials (wood and straw materials) for fire training purposes and four concrete pads for other training or storage.Plans also include widening Emergency Lane, the road leading to the center, from 11 feet to 22 feet to accommodate firetruck and larger emergency vehicle traffic, and widening the roadway turning radius to Emergency Lane and relocating the existing access driveway to the water treatment building on the north side of the property.Meixell outlined his inspection of the site, currently undeveloped on wooded land owned by Carbon County.He said that the plan, "conforms to all preliminary plan requirements of the Nesquehoning Borough Subdivision and Land Development Ordinance," but said a few areas in the plans need to be corrected before final plan submission can occur.These areas included minor issues such as some proposed developments not labeled on the plans, entry points and some items should be better defined and purposes identified and the proposed heights of the law enforcement observation tower and fireman's training tower should be labeled and heights should be checked to make sure they conform with height requirements of the Nesquehoning Borough Zoning Ordinance.The proposed training facility, which has been in the planning phase since last February, will be used by fire departments, EMS services, police, county departments and other organizations in Carbon County.The new site would provide emergency services with various practice sites, as well as classrooms, a 90-100 seat lecture hall, storage for the Carbon County Council of Government and other equipment and new offices for the Emergency Management Agency.The Carbon County 911 Communications Center will remain in the current building on the site, which now houses both the Communications Center and Emergency Management Agency.The project is estimated to cost about $10 million. Carbon County Commissioners are working to secure the funding through state and federal grants. A total of $5 million in grants has been applied for, but any word on if the county was approved had been held up because of the nine-month state budget stalemate.This past December, Nesquehoning Planning Commission voted 3-0 to accept the plan. Commission member John McArdle, Nesquehoning Hose Company Fire Chief, abstained from that vote because of his involvement in the project.During that review, Commissioners' Chairman Wayne Nothstein, also a volunteer firefighter in Lehighton, told the commission volunteers have been forced to travel out-of-county for training.Volunteer firefighters had a burn building and training site on a small piece of land at Baer Memorial Park in Lehighton, but that building was condemned and demolished in 2014 after engineers found it to be unsafe due to extreme deterioration.Since then, firefighters had been looking for a site in the county that could accommodate training.Firefighters are required to train for various emergency situations, as well as stay up-to-date on regulations. Because of this, volunteers put in a significant number of hours traveling to training sites around the state to complete these tasks annually.The county has extended its county's contract with Delta Development Group Inc. of Mechanicsburg, which specializes in identifying and working to secure funding sources for large-scale projects. Even with the grant delays, the project is on track to be completed in 2019.