Inside new public safety campus, ‘it truly is a world-class facility’

If you want a sense of how significant the new Sioux Falls Public Safety Campus is, just listen to the leaders of the departments that will use it.

“I’m humbled every time I make it out to campus,” Fire Chief Matt McAreavey said. “It truly is a world-class facility.”

The 42-acre site along 60th Street North at Sycamore Avenue, which includes 100,000 square feet of training facilities, officially opened over the weekend.

“For me, it’s been like a kid on Christmas,” Police Chief Jon Thum said. “It exceeds my wildest expectations of what this facility was going to be.”

For Sioux Falls, the surrounding region and maybe even beyond, this new campus and training center combines public safety workspace and simulation opportunities unlike perhaps anything known in the field.

“I anticipate people from around the country will visit our campus to do research and see what a training center can look like and what we’ve created here,” Thum said.

Inside the campus

The main building on campus, a 40,000-square-foot facility, includes administrative offices, classroom space and a structurally reinforced dispatch center known as a PSAP, or public safety answering point, serving Sioux Falls and Minnehaha County.

“The rest of that facility is really neat and awe-inspiring, but you walk into the 911 center and every individual who walks in the door says ‘Wow!'” McAreavey said.

“The team has earned it. It’s next-level. Everything was very intentional — the lighting, the chandeliers, everything — so they can customize it to remove stress and create a happy work environment.”

The campus also includes a firearms training building with 15 lanes for live-fire shooting, and it’s equipped with light and sound control to create real-world training conditions. Unlike the open-air facility near the Sioux Falls Regional Airport, this one is enclosed to simulate many scenarios and offer a higher level of training.

Additionally, an emergency vehicle operations course/skills pad includes a track and pad covering about 13 acres. The city has held some training there and will do more in the next couple of months.

“We’re like proud parents,” Thum said. “That’s where this enthusiasm and excitement comes from. I’m blown away every time I go out there.”

Simulating emergencies

The campus includes eight tactical buildings designed to help simulate real-life situations that emergency responders might encounter.

There’s a two-story home similar to older homes in neighborhoods such as those near St. Joseph Cathedral.

Another two-story building mimics a mixed-use commercial structure.

And a six-story tower was designed to replicate a high-rise incident that crews might encounter downtown.

That one has about a dozen different scenarios that can trigger inside it, so “they have no idea what they’re going to experience,” McAreavey said.

“Across a career, we may be able to manipulate it to 30 or 40 scenarios. … All the things we teach them to do on a real incident, we’re going to have to do on these training scenarios.”

Police and fire can work together on many of the training sessions, and the proximity of the Metro Communications team means dispatchers also will learn more about what happens during an emergency. While it generally won’t be open to the public, the new campus should afford some opportunities to learn more about careers in public safety, McAreavey said.

“It isn’t so much focused on recruitment as allowing people the opportunity to identify whether it’s a good fit,” he said. “Is that something you’d be happy doing?”

Statement of support

From a recruitment standpoint, “the facilities speak for themselves,” but they also deliver a deeper message, Thum said.

“The ability to say we funded this in 2020 while the rest of the country was defunding police and this is a direct reflection of our community’s commitment to public safety is such a huge selling point,” he said.

“People want to work in a community that supports them, and this is a shining example of a community that supports public safety.”

There’s also plenty of room to continuing investing. Of the 100-acre parcel, about 40 percent has been developed for the campus so far. There could be opportunities to look at using part of the site for regional water retention while also potentially offering water-related training. A more natural area on the property also could offer a space for employee wellness. And there’s land for future building needs.

“We’re excited for the future on that campus, with space to expand on those capabilities,” Thum said, while adding that given the escalation in construction costs since the city began the project two years ago, it’s fortunate the timing worked the way it did.

“This would have been a shell of what it is today,” he said. “It paid off huge.”

Even the streets built on the campus have significance in the history of Sioux Falls public safety. For that story, click below.

Names of fallen public safety personnel to live on in new training campus