The Spokane Police Academy is expanding its training facility with a $1.4 million addition that will provide more room for law enforcement education, says Jacqui MacConnell, director of strategic initiatives at the Spokane Police Department.

The academy is located north of Felts Field and south of the Spokane River, on about 13 acres of land at 2302 N. Waterworks, in East Spokane.

Proposed development plans call for the construction of a single-story, 3,500-square-foot building, according to a predevelopment application on file with the city of Spokane.

The Spokane office of Design West Architects PA is designing the academy addition.

The project is still in the planning process and no general contractor has been selected yet. 

"Hopefully, by the end of the year, we might break ground," she says.

MacConnell says the new building will be built west of the existing facility and it will replace an existing parking lot at the site. The interior of the new space will include two small offices and a larger shared office space for trainers, two classrooms for recruits, and restrooms, she says.

"We have a very limited budget," MacConnell says. "There's no frills."

The Spokane Police Department holds departmentwide training three times a year at the existing facility and hosts three other basic law enforcement classes, including courses for the Criminal Justice Training Commission, she explains.

"The current building would be for Spokane Police Department training," she says. "This new building would allow for us to basically separate the basic law enforcement academies into their own building."

Separating the training spaces will allow the department to host more department training sessions, she says. The number of hosted academies will remain at three per year.