The Spokane County Sheriff’s Office has moved its training and personnel units to the former Mountain View Middle School, says sheriff’s Sgt. Martin Tucker, who oversees the units.

The sheriff’s training center now occupies 46,200 square feet of leased space at the former school site at 6011 N. Chase Road, near the Washington-Idaho border, about a mile north of the Spokane River.

The center had occupied smaller quarters at 10319 E. Appleway Blvd., in the former University City mall complex.

“The lease was up at the old place,” Tucker says. “They have different plans for it, so we found another place.”

Doug Byrd, of Byrd Real Estate Group LLC, negotiated the Mountain View lease.

Mountain View closed in 2011, and Tucker says the former school building has some advantages in that it’s larger than the U-City space, has one story, and was built for classroom use.

In addition to regular sheriff’s in-service training, the training center is used for local and regional law enforcement education and training, he says. At least seven sheriff’s employees work full time at the center, Tucker says.

“We host a lot of training,” Tucker says. “Vendors will come in and use our space in return for free tuition for some of our people. It saves money for the citizens of Spokane County, and we don’t have to pay to send some of our people out of town.”

Tucker says an analysis conducted last year calculated that the center had a $653,000 economic impact in 2013. That year, more than 2,300 officers from around the Pacific Northwest participated in 80 training courses, including 434 free spots for Spokane County sheriff’s deputies, he says.

The courses include advanced collision investigation, grant writing, first aid, FBI leadership, boater education, instructor development, and field officer training, Tucker says.

Tuition for courses typically runs from $99 to $650 per student, and some courses take several days to complete, he says.

The city of Spokane Valley recently purchased 3.4 acres of land at the southeast corner of Sprague Avenue and Dartmouth Road, at the former U-City mall property, where city officials have said they hope to construct a new city hall within two years.

“The parking garage that we sat under is going to end up being torn down,” Tucker says. The demolition likely will include razing at least a portion of the space the training center had occupied, he says.

The Mountain View Middle School building, which has a total of 66,000 square feet of space, was built in 1978. The East Valley School District, which owns the property, closed the school due to state budget cuts, a failed bond measure, and the district’s long-range plans to eliminate middle schools and to consolidate sixth, seventh, and eighth grades into its elementary schools.