New public safety training center takes shape with focus on real-life simulations

From above, the new Sioux Falls law enforcement training center almost looks like a little village.

On the ground, it’s starting to feel like one.

“We’re making it like a small city,” said Erin Bofenkamp, strategic project manager for the city of Sioux Falls.

The idea is “to simulate different scenarios in the real world,” she continued.

The 42-acre site is being developed along 60th Street North at Sycamore Avenue, with 100,000 square feet of training facilities on schedule to open this fall.

“There’s eight different structures — it’s a lot,” Bofenkamp said. “It’s been really fun to see a whole campus come together.”

Members of Sioux Falls Police and Sioux Falls Fire Rescue were asked during the design process which elements of their job are trickiest to execute. From there, the training center was designed “with Sioux Falls in mind,” Bofenkamp said.

“So you’ll see a six-story structure that really looks like something you’d see on Phillips Avenue. It’s even going to have the same planters in front of it, the same parking meters, because they have to work around all of that.”

Within that building, each floor is designed to simulate a different scenario, she said.

“So one of them is a hotel with similar hallways, one of them is going to be like a business, and the other is like apartments or condos, so it really gives them experience,” she said. “And then there’s a two-story structure that’s like a really typical commercial building.”

Behind that will be a replica Victorian-style house broken into apartments with an external stairway.

“It’s something they see a lot in the core of Sioux Falls that’s a little trickier for them,” Bofenkamp said. “It’s super cool.”

There’s additional space reserved for future training structures.

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

The campus also includes a firearms training building with 15 lanes for live-fire shooting, equipped with light and sound control to create real-world training conditions.

“Right now, it’s out by the airport, and it’s open-air. This will be all enclosed, so they can simulate a lot of different scenarios, and it will offer a much higher level of training,” Bofenkamp said.

Additionally, an emergency vehicle operations course/skills pad will include a track and pad covering about 13 acres.

This large paved course will be where fire and EMS apparatus drivers and police officers can hone vehicle driving skills, vehicle safety, vehicle pursuit tactics and other scenarios.

“They’ll have an area they can flood and freeze and practice spinning out on ice,” Bofenkamp added. “That’s a mile around with a lot of concrete in the middle to simulate different things.”

Ultimately, the plan is to make the campus available to other public safety entities once Sioux Falls becomes familiar with its capacity.

“This facility is definitely unmatched in the region … even in the country,” Bofenkamp said. “We keep investing now, when police are not as supported in other communities around the country. To have this opening and being built during this time is just huge for Sioux Falls.”

The streets being built on the campus also 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