Gainesville city officials officially broke ground on Monday, April 21 on the new public safety training complex.
The complex, set to open on 2026 at a location on Fullenwider Road on the southeast end of the city, will provide training facilities for both the Gainesville Police Department, and the Gainesville Fire Department. Gainesville Police Chief Jay Parrish said it marks a major facility upgrade for both departments as the city continues to grow.
"We've never had our own independent training facility," Parrish said. "The growth is what's actually pushed this to occur. Each agency has grown to the point that we can't just in-house train. We've got to have a dedicated space."
Gainesville Fire Chief Brandon Ellis echoed those sentiments, saying it will be a huge upgrade for fire training in the city.
"Currently, we have to utilize Hall County's training facility, and we pay a percentage to use it. The issue we have is, the facility, when it was built 25 years ago, Hall County (Fire Rescue) had just over 200 employees and Gainesville Fire had, I think, maybe 60 at the time. It was built to that capacity," Ellis said. "Right now, we're at 116 employees and Hall County is close to 450, I believe. So for us to be able to run a recruit class and Hall County run a recruit class, we actually have to sit down and get a schedule out, and a lot of our training has to overlap, so we've actually had to utilize Jackson County's facilities multiple times in the last two years."
Now, not only will both departments have adequate training spaces, but they will be located on the same complex, allowing the two departments to train together. Parrish said that will be helpful for calls when both departments have to respond.
"What we've learned through history is police are doing something one way, the fire department is doing it another. They're doing it to their best practices and we're doing it to our best practices, and sometimes those conflict," Parrish said. "Now, from a training standpoint, we're going to know those conflicts ahead of time, and be able to address."
Ellis agreed, saying joint training will be a key advantage of the new facility.
"If there's a shooting, a stabbing, a robbery, anything where there's a medical standby for us, (the police department is) on a different radio channel because they operate in a certain language that's separate from the fire department," Ellis said. "So we kind of have to wait for their scene commander to say 'alright, we're clear, fire side can come in.' So a lot of times, we have no clue what's going on, because right now we don't train as much together on those incidents, but having this facility allows us to do that joint training."
The new complex will also include features that will allow both departments to scenario train in ways that were not easily doable before, according to both chiefs. Ellis said as Gainesville's skyline continues to grow, training for elevated firefighting is becoming more needed.
"With more apartment buildings coming, taller buildings, the hospital just built their new tower, currently it's hard for us to train how to use high-angle rescue without going somewhere outside of Hall County," Ellis said. "Having our own facility where we can expand and do our own training facilities like that, it allows us to actually practice specifically to the environment we're going to be in."
Parrish added that the police training facilities will also be adaptable to allow training in different types of environments.
"We have purchased the stuff where we can set up temporary walls, so we can make it look like an apartment, we can make it look like an office building and run through those walls, those doors and set up scenario-based training," Parrish said.
Parrish and Ellis helped lead the push to the city council to approve the SPLOST funding for the new facility in recent years, and both said it is great to now see the site finally being built.
"We keep waiting and keep waiting and keep waiting, and then one day they said 'hey, go to the site,' and there's trees down, silt fence is up and you're like 'wow, this is really happening,'" Ellis said.
"It's a little surreal," Parrish said. "Now it's kind of like coming up on Christmas. We know we've got about 12 to 14 months and my mind's already ticking about when this thing is going to be done."
