It was once a target of nationwide protests and of what critics, including Chance the Rapper, called a symbol of then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s misplaced spending priorities.
Now, as the city’s expanded and more costly police and fire training academy nears completion, it’s seen by some as a source of excitement and possibility for a West Garfield Park community no longer forgotten.
With a $128 million price tag — up nearly 35% from the original cost — the academy will have just about everything first-responders need to train, Fire Commissioner Annette Nance-Holt told City Council members at Thursday’s budget hearing.
Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) then bragged indirectly about the project (“a beautiful place,” she called it) she fought so hard to bring to the 4400 block of West Chicago Avenue in her impoverished West Side ward.
“I want to know now from you, what are your plans once you come into the new fire academy that’s being built in my ward?” Mitts asked.
Nance-Holt said it’s “very exciting” to think about the training that can be offered at the state-of-the-art facility.
“It’ll be a soft launch for a lot of us. They’re still going through a lot of training. Getting to know the building,” Nance-Holt said.
There will be opportunities for firefighters to train with each other and also with other first responders, she added. That includes special operations teams and CTA training, she said.
There’s also “a model city,” with shells of buildings, and an ambulance, “which is very exciting, too, so they can have real-life experience being on an ambulance,” she said.
“Our recruits get trained there. We’re looking at promotional training there. We’re looking at executive development training for our staff as well. ... And being there by the [new] Boys & Girls Club is actually a benefit, too, because now, we can interact with those young people ... and try to give them some insight into what we do and maybe considering doing what firefighters and paramedics do every day.”
Last summer, the City Council agreed to lease 20,000 square feet of land on the 34-acre-campus to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago at $1 a year for up to 75 years.
That paved the way for an $8 million, 18,000-square-foot youth development center, separated from the academy by an open-air plaza.
At the time, Mitts called it a “history-making moment” for a West Side that desperately needs youth programming to provide a constructive outlet for young people.
“When I first came in, the first thing I asked for was a youth center for our children. It took me 21 years,” Mitts said that day.
Without mentioning the #NoCopAcademy movement by name, Mitts noted Thursday some had asked, “Why have a Boys & Girls Club next to a public safety academy?”
“Why not, I say? They can’t be what they can’t see,” Mitts said.
She told Nance-Holt: “I am so glad to hear you echo that same sentiment. We have to look for the positive. We can’t look for the negative.”
The value of having the club next to the academy became evident later in the hearing, when Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th) hammered Nance-Holt about the shortage of minorities in the fire department — despite repeated outreach.
“We have all been out there trying to recruit. [But] I’ve found a lot of our youth don’t want to do this job,” the commissioner told Taylor.
“I need to take you with me in my car when I go talk to young people in high schools, and they look at me and go, ‘I don’t want to do that. I ain’t doin’ that. Are you crazy? I ain’t going in a fire.’ “
A $33 million “mock neighborhood” pushed the cost past the original $95 million.
The “tactical scenario village,” sort of like a movie set, includes a pretend city block complete with a six-story burn tower and a car crash area to simulate emergency rescues.
“The areas where they do the training on the upper floors — if you had a fire, a true-scenario, once they destroy, how long are you looking for the rebuild so that you can keep it going?” Mitts asked.
District Chief of Special Operations Jamar Sullivan said the burn tower is built with “very resilient material that can actually withstand repeated use.”
Mayor Lori Lightfoot was president of the Police Board in March 2018 when she said locating the facility “in this high-crime, impoverished neighborhood, where relations between the police and the community are fraught, without a clear plan for community engagement, is a mistake.”
But in June 2019, a month after taking office, she toured the academy, watched recruits apprehend mock suspects in a dark hallway, and said she came away convinced a new academy is essential.
“This is gonna be a significant investment on the West Side that desperately needs investment, but if we’re gonna make that kind of investment, I want to get it right. I want it to be the best-in-class training facility for first responders anywhere in the country. That’s what we ought to aspire to,” she said on that day.
