The old Police Academy opened in 1964 and was located at 235 East 20th Street in Manhattan,[2] in the Gramercy Park area.[3] Within 25 years, however, the facility was regarded as antiquated and obsolete,[3][2] and no longer had capacity for larger classes of police trainees.[4]Jeremy Travis (then the special counsel to the police commissioner, and years later the president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice) urged construction of a new facility in 1985.[2]
After the NYPD moved its academy to Queens, the fate of the old academy building was initially unclear.[6] In 2008 and 2013, local residents and Manhattan Community Board 6 pushed to convert the eight-story building into a public school.[7] In October 2016, however, the NYPD opened its Candidate Assessment Center in the old building; the center recruits applicants to join the police department.[8][9]
Description
The new facility is located at 130-30 28th Avenue, was constructed at a cost of $950 million, and has three buildings with a combined 730,000 square feet of space.[2] It is not easily accessible by public transit; the closest New York City Subway station, Flushing–Main Street, is more than one mile away.[3]Perkins & Will, Tactical Design, and Michael Fieldman were the project's architects, and Turner and STV were the construction managers.[2]
The three buildings at the academy are a classroom and office building (eight stories, with an atrium, cafeteria, auditorium, and library); a "physical and tactical training" building, including a large gymnasium and swimming pool; and a central utilities plant.[2] The training facilities include simulated locations, such as a mock subway station, mock courthouses, and mock precinct houses.[2] The main police academy site does not include a firing range (the NYPD range is located at Rodman's Neck in the Bronx),[5][2] nor is the facility used for driving instruction (NYPD officers train in driving at Floyd Bennett Field).[5]
