Las Vegas police plan for outdoor training village

The first structure in a sprawling complex that will prepare first responders for terrorist attacks and mass shootings is nearly complete, and the Las Vegas police foundation is now seeking millions in taxpayer dollars for future construction.

A 60,000-square-foot, one-story training and administrative building at the Reality Based Training Center, 7370 E. Carey Road, needs only finishing touches like flooring, furniture and technology to meet a November completion date. And concrete walls for a nearby 130,000-square-foot police tactical training village have been built. Completion of that building is scheduled for 2022.

Tom Kovach, executive director of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Foundation, said the training center will prepare first responders for complex public safety responses like the one they faced during the Route 91 Harvest festival shooting on Oct. 1, 2017.

“We are going to create the different types of spaces and venues that officers and first responders will get called to,” Kovach said. “It will be as real as possible. A school. A grocery store. A convenience store. Bank. Apartment. A casino floor. A house.”

Through October, work on the project had been funded with $19 million raised by the foundation through private donors, but the foundation is seeking another $6 million to complete the first phase of the project. A reliance on private money appears likely to change in the future, as the foundation has turned to state, county and city leaders to help fund the second phase of the project.

Kovach said he hoped to tap into President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which sent $6.7 billion to the Silver State to help fuel recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The package included $350 billion in emergency funding for state and local governments and $10 billion for capital projects.

Another $3 million in federal funds to pay for technology at the training center is under consideration in the Department of Justice’s 2022 budget, according to the Public Safety Foundation Network. Nevada’s two senators requested that allocation.

“We asked for money for phase two in part because the president stated earlier this year publicly that he hopes local municipalities will give a good amount of the money to law enforcement,” Kovach said. “Our local leaders are very supportive of law enforcement.”

City, county receive requests

City of Las Vegas spokesman Jace Radke said Thursday that the foundation requested $20 million in rescue plan money, while Clark County said the foundation asked for $40 million from the county. Submittal of a request to the state for funding is planned, Kovach said.

If money is received from the state and local governments, it would go toward two separate training areas: an outdoor tactical training village and an emergency vehicle operations course, which are part of phase two of the project.

“The outdoor training village will be designed to mimic typical residential and commercial neighborhoods in the Las Vegas Valley,” the foundation’s request to the city stated. “Not just a prop-town, this facility will be designed to enable training in a true urban setting.”

The plan called for “an integrated casino building (casino, restaurant, hotel, etc.), a strip mall, a multi-building residential neighborhood with homes and apartments, a trailer park, an outdoor recreational park, a big box store, a gas station, a school, a motel, and other facilities that reflect the developing infrastructure of Southern Nevada.”

The four-track emergency vehicle course “is not just a speedway,” the foundation’s request stated. “This facility will be designed to enable training on all major forms of transportation for both drivers and tactical assault training.”

It would include a “motorcycle training area,” “a floodable skid pad” and “a freeway portion.”

Another component to the course would provide training for police responses to public safety threats involving “full-size aircraft, city buses and school buses, and train cars and train crossings for hazmat and emergency management training.”

Training center to be shared

Kovach said the training facility will not just be for Las Vegas police. The center has developed partnerships with other local and state law enforcement agencies, firefighters, the FBI and Nellis Air Force Base. Nellis has set aside 200 acres of federal land to house the emergency vehicle training complex off Hollywood Boulevard on the southeast perimeter of the base.

Representatives of the city and county said Thursday that no decisions have been made on whether any federal funds would be dedicated to the training center. Clark County Commission Chair Marilyn Kirkpatrick said she has been working with police leaders for four years on the project.

“Yes, they and several others did put in grant (requests) for different infrastructure projects,” Kirkpatrick said, but she noted that the immediate priority for rescue plan money in Clark County is “housing, housing, housing, housing,” given the pandemic’s financial toll on many county residents.

“We have to make sure that people have a place to live, social services,” Kirkpatrick said. “We need to make sure we can meet the needs of everyone who has been impacted.”

Kirkpatrick said “it is too soon to say we will fund” the training center. But she said she would support putting the issue on the Clark County Commission agenda for discussion at some point. She said she views the center as an important part of planning for the future of the valley.

“It is safety for our officers, as well,” she said. “We want them to have the best training and tools to ensure they are safe while they are out there.”

Contact Glenn Puit by email at gpuit@reviewjournal.com. Follow @GlennatRJ on Twitter.