Benefits

A shared safety training and wellness center allows for:

• Better teamwork across community safety departments
• Increased space to coordinate stronger incident responses
• Consistent training and wellness standards and expectations

Modernized training areas 

• Classrooms (30–100 seats) with modern technology
• Indoor and outdoor scenario-based training 
• Virtual reality and reality-based training spaces 
• Vehicular and pursuit training areas 
• Body-worn camera and co-responder model training 

Wellness and safety 

• Dedicated mental health and wellness spaces 
• Locker rooms, showers, and secure storage 
• Facilities designed to reduce fatigue, injury, and burnout 

Specialized training 

• Canine units 
• Defensive tactics 
• Indoor firing range 

Current gaps

Our community safety departments do not have a dedicated space for training or wellness. Most departments make do with areas that are available in their current buildings.

Our buildings are spread out and limited in flexibility. This makes it harder to train across departments for large-scale emergencies. 

Hamilton Special Operations Center (SOC)

This building is:

• Functionally outdated
• Leased and cannot be expanded or updated
• Too small for modern training
• Unable to support technology needs
• Mainly used by the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD)

Emergency Operations and Training Facility (EOTF)

This building:

• Is primarily used by Fire and Emergency Management training
• Has limited space for multi-department coordination
• Does not fully meet current or future operational needs

911

• No soundproof decompression areas  
• Small classroom that only accommodates 12 people  
• Shared fitness space   
• No computer lab with Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD)  

Emergency Management 

• Ready Camp emergency prep training currently held at community spaces  
• Not enough space at the EOTF for both:
• • Incident Command Post (ICP)
  • Emergency Operations Center (EOC) 

Fire 

• No computer lab for trainings  
• No driving simulator for training Fire Motor Operators
• Lack of space for EMS pathways training

Neighborhood Safety 

• Lack of space to meet with potential and current contractors
• No training space to host local organizations for violence prevention or intervention work

Police

• Severely outdated current SOC building 
• No family support rooms  
• No physical therapy or rehabilitative medical spaces  
• Limited number of private offices with no soundproofing