Public Safety Academy of Northeast Indiana

Regional public safety training facility, 7602 Patriot Crossing, Fort Wayne, at Southtown Centre; dedicated November 28, 2007; the off-site teaching home of the FWCS Career Academy's public safety programs and, from 2012, of Ivy Tech's south campus

The facility: The Public Safety Academy of Northeast Indiana is a training facility, not a school in the state's book: it holds no school number, enrolls no students of its own, and grants no diploma or degree. It stands in this record because schools teach inside it. Its classrooms and training floors have served the region's police officers, firefighters, and medics since 2007, and its students, the ones who are students, belong to the FWCS Career Academy, to East Allen County Schools, and to Ivy Tech Community College. It is carried here as this section carries other program facilities: on its own documented record.

Building it: The academy was a project of the City of Fort Wayne with the Public Safety Foundation of Northeast Indiana, a nonprofit formed to raise public and private money for a regional training home. Mayor Graham Richard championed it, and the city's 2006 financial report counted it among his signature projects. Groundbreaking was scheduled for June 2006, with the opening planned for November 2007. The announcements priced it at 27 million dollars for 125,000 square feet and carried a state distinction with it: the academy was designated the first of ten regional fire training centers in Indiana. Its architects, SchenkelShultz Architecture of Fort Wayne, designed it as a city within a city, simulated streetscapes inside a working training plant, on the brownfield of the abandoned Southtown Mall, and entered it in the 2008 Exhibition of School Planning as a project of distinction.

Opening: The academy was dedicated on Wednesday, November 28, 2007, at a cost reported at the dedication as 26.8 million dollars. The dedication account lists what the money bought: a 300-seat auditorium, a training gymnasium, a 16-lane indoor firing range, an apparatus bay, a simunition room, a simulator suite, an emergency medical services classroom, wet and dry laboratories, and weight and mat rooms. Its first director, Brent Johnson, stated its purpose at the dedication: integrated training for the region's first responders across the police, fire, and medical disciplines, and education for the students who would become public safety leaders, who before the academy had traveled as far as Wisconsin, Texas, and Ohio for the same training.

The school connection: Education was written into the academy from its announcement, which named Fort Wayne Community Schools' Anthis Career Center among its education partners, alongside Ivy Tech, IPFW, Indiana Tech, Taylor University, the University of Saint Francis, and Tri-State University. The connection runs in the present year through Anthis's successor: the FWCS Career Academy's own history page records that its Fire Science and Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice programs are held off-site at the Public Safety Academy at Southtown Centre. East Allen County Schools' course catalog has likewise listed a Public Service offering taught at the Public Safety Academy for its high school students.

The 2008 break: The partnership that built the academy broke inside its first year. In May 2008 its executive director, Brent Johnson, and the foundation's chairman, Peter Eshelman, resigned. The account carried in the Journal of Emergency Medical Services states their fear plainly: that Mayor Tom Henry's administration meant to keep the facility under the city's control, rather than the regional and independent partnership the foundation had formed it to be. No later account resolving the governance question was reached for this entry, and the break is printed as the dated account it is.

The Ivy Tech years: Ivy Tech Community College Northeast had been a partner since 2007, teaching its public safety programs inside the academy. In August 2012 Mayor Henry and Chancellor Jerrilee K. Mosier announced that the college would sublease the whole facility and run it as the Public Safety Academy: Ivy Tech South Campus, with ownership of the building to pass to the college when the city's remaining nine-year lease ran out. The college's programs there, Criminal Justice, Paralegal Studies, Public Safety Technology, and Paramedic Science, had enrolled more than 1,200 students in 2011 and 2012. The academy stayed the home of the Fort Wayne police and fire training academies through the change. The police department alone was credited with more than 18,000 hours of training a year in the building, and with having trained the officers of 98 departments across the region. The same account gives the building as 132,000 square feet, against the 125,000 of the 2006 announcement; both figures stand as their dates give them.

Present state: The city still teaches there. Its relaunched Citizens Police Academy meets at the Public Safety Academy on Patriot Crossing, and the building remains a working training plant rather than a monument. One point stands open on the record: whether the ownership transfer to Ivy Tech announced in 2012 was completed on its announced terms is not stated in the sources reached for this entry, and no current Ivy Tech page reached lists a south campus among the college's Fort Wayne locations.

Sources:

1. Waynedale News, December 5, 2007: the dedication of the Public Safety Academy of Northeast Indiana on November 28, 2007, its cost, its spaces, and Director Brent Johnson's account of its purpose
2. Waynedale News, March 8, 2006, mayor's column: the announced groundbreaking, opening date, cost, size, regional fire training center designation, and education partners, https://waynedalenews.com/2006/03/dear-waynedale-readers998/
3. City of Fort Wayne, Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, 2006: the academy as a signature project of Mayor Graham Richard at Southtown Centre
4. Journal of Emergency Medical Services, May 6, 2008: the resignations of Brent Johnson and Peter Eshelman and the control dispute behind them
5. SchenkelShultz Architecture, entry in the 2008 Exhibition of School Planning, and Elevatus Architecture portfolio: the Northeast Indiana Regional Public Safety Academy, its city within a city design and brownfield site
6. FWCS Career Academy, Our History page: Fire Science and Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice programs held off-site at the Public Safety Academy at Southtown Centre, https://careeracademy.fortwayneschools.org/new-about-us/about-us
7. East Allen County Schools, course catalog, 2017-18: the Public Service offering at the Public Safety Academy
8. Waynedale News, August 24, 2012, message from Mayor Tom Henry: the Ivy Tech sublease, the Public Safety Academy: Ivy Tech South Campus, the announced ownership transfer, enrollments, and training hours, https://waynedalenews.com/2012/08/message-from-the-mayor-public-saftey-academy-of-northeast-indiana/
9. City of Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne Police Department Citizens Police Academy page: the academy meeting at the Public Safety Academy, 7602 Patriot Crossing