$1.5B College Point
police academy okayed

BY TONIA N. CIMINO

Wednesday, November 18, 2009 1:23 PM EST

Thanks to a 42 to 7 vote by the City Council – and a construction contract that has already been awarded – it seems that the new police academy in College Point is on track.

In fact, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Tuesday, November 17 that, “the city [can] move forward on constructing a 21st century police academy to train the next generation of New York’s Finest. . . we can now break ground on the new building.”

Located at College Point Boulevard and 28th Avenue, the academy is a $1.5 billion project that will consolidate all of the instruction facilities for new police, school safety and traffic enforcement officers, as well as the continuing education of veterans, on its 30-acre campus. It will have 250 classrooms, firing ranges, indoor and outdoor tracks and a tactical training village including a simulated subway station.

“The current police academy in Manhattan is over 40-years old and was built for a department half the size of the current one,” said Bloomberg. “The new site will allow for a larger, state-of-the-art academy that will consolidate in one campus the facilities for civilians, recruits and active police officers which are currently spread out across the city.”

Borough President Helen Marshall and Community Board 7 also unanimously approved the project, but some locals have expressed concerns.

“Development has never helped us,” said a resident when the plan was first unveiled in 2007, explaining, “All that’s happened is impossible traffic on the big roads [College Point Boulevard, 14th and 20th Avenues] out of town.”

City Councilmember-elect Dan Halloran issued a statement in which he said, “As anyone from College Point knows, there are only three roads in and out of the neighborhood. The planned academy is at the intersection of two of them. This is going to have a serious impact on transit in the area. Northeast Queens drivers already have too few places to park their cars, and now hundreds of police cars will be added to our streets.”

Halloran added, “The additional traffic will make it even harder to get in and out of College Point. This neighborhood’s small businesses just got 5,000 new potential customers, who happen to be police officers. Their presence will keep the community safer. But what the neighborhood really needs is good planning.”