Montgomery County Breaks Ground on New Public Safety Training Academy

2-MultiAgencyServicePark(MASP)-SiteMapMACo President and Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett and others broke ground on a a new Public Safety Training Academy facility. The facility will be located at 8751 Snouffer School Road in Gathersburg and is part of the Montgomery County Multi Agency Service Park (MASP). The facility is another of Leggett’s Smart Growth Initiative projects and is part of his plan to revitalize a former industrial area into an urban village.

From the Montgomery County Press Release:

“It is especially gratifying that we break ground today for another of our Smart Growth Initiative projects which continue the vision of using our building site resources to their greatest potential,” said Leggett. “By 2016 we will have a world-class public safety training facility that will have a positive impact on our public safety personnel and the safety of our County for generations to come.”

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“This premier facility will educate and train generations of career and volunteer firefighters and emergency medical personnel,” said Acting Fire Chief Goldstein. The collaborative training and joint drills that police and the fire department conduct will be enhanced at this state-of-the art facility and will serve as a model for keeping Montgomery County at the forefront of innovative and cutting-edge training.”

The training facility construction will include: a 119,334-gross-square-foot (GSF) Academic Building, a 4,850-GSF Fire Residential Training Building, a 11,300-GSF Fire Commercial Training Building, a 12,000-GSF High Bay and Fire Training Support Building, a 15,386-GSF Apparatus Building, a 6,000-GSF Canine Training Building, a 12,000-GSF Multi-use Cityscape Structure Training area, a 2,075-GSF Department of Transportation Vehicle Training Support Building, and a 2,095-GSF Fuel Facility.

The PSTA is designed to achieve a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver certification by incorporating innovative features. The design is conceived to make sustainability not only a matter of achieving a point total, but making it an integral and seamless part of the buildings and landscape.