Fire training facility clears Crest Hill Plan Commission, prepares for final City Council vote

Crest Hill — The Crest Hill Plan Commission granted approval to a final plan for the Lockport Township Fire Protection District’s proposed training center.

The LTFPD first revealed the plan last year and now will bring it before the Crest Hill City Council for final approval in April.

“We received a very warm response, and I think the votes showed that,” LTFPD Chief John O’Connor said.

The proposed facility, located on the south side of Division Street west of Broadway Street and east of Weber Road near the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, would provide training grounds and facilities for a wide range of situations for the LTFPD, as well as for local police departments and the Will County Emergency Management Agency.

In the March 13 vote, the Plan Commission split the approval of the plans into three action items. Two of the items received unanimous approval, while the third received one no vote.

The controversial item involves the LTFPD’s partnership with the Lockport Police Department to build a gun range on the site for local agencies to use for training purposes. Crest Hill already is home to two gun ranges for police training, and some residents expressed concern about increased noise.

Illinois State Police has a gun range just east of the proposed site on Division Street.

“Nothing has changed in our building plans,” O’Connor said after the meeting. “After concerns were raised, we hired a sound engineer to do a study on the volume of different types of guns in an outdoor range with the kinds of mitigations we’ve put in place. With elevated berms on three sides and a sound barrier wall on the back of an outdoor range, it pretty much cuts the sound in half.”

O’Connor said the engineering report showed that the sound of gunfire in the range as designed would make a 45-decibel sound. For comparison, he said the volume of normal human conversation is 60 decibels, and a whispering voice is about 25 decibels.

“You’re still going to hear it, but it isn’t going to be very loud,” O’Connor said. “You already have two other ranges in that vicinity. Unless the other agencies choose to stop using those, you will always have some gun noise in Ward 2.”

The gun range will be used by the Lockport Police Department, the Crest Hill Police Department, the Romeoville Police Department (for rifle training only), Lockport Park District police, the Lewis University Police Department and for LTFPD arson investigators.

“The state gave us this land for free,” O’Connor said. “We had no mandate to let other organizations use it, but we’re talking about public safety. If others can benefit from this gift, then why not? It doesn’t impede us.”

O’Connor said that the plans received support from local officials, including state Sen. Meg Loughran Cappel, D-Shorewood; state Rep. Natalie Manley, D-Joliet; Will County EMA Director Allison Anderson; and multiple local police chiefs.

Aside from the gun range, the 13-acre property will be home to a four-story structure made of repurposed shipping containers that would be used to simulate multiple emergency situations, including structure fires.

The center also will include classrooms and emergency vehicle maintenance bays; areas for live fire training; hazmat and car crash simulations; K-9 and drone search training; and a pond for water rescue drills in all weather.

In the event of an emergency or natural disaster, the facility also will be equipped to be used as a backup emergency operations center for the Will County EMA.

“I anticipate this being an enormous success for improving safety once we get past this hurdle,” O’Connor said.

The plans will move on to a City Council workshop before coming up for a final council vote in late April, O’Connor said.

If approved, the LTFPD hopes to go to bid on the project this spring, with groundbreaking expected in the fall.

O’Connor said the department estimates a one-year timetable for completed construction on both the training facility and the gun range.

The cost of the project is estimated at $16 million, which will be paid through bonds and will not increase taxes for residents of the fire protection district, which serves 46 square miles in Lockport, Crest Hill and portions of Romeoville.

When asked whether the budget for the project could increase due to anticipated inflation on materials because of tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports, including steel and lumber, O’Connor said he is not too concerned.

“We got our estimates a year ago, when concrete prices were up and interest rates were high,” he said. “Every year that passes, some material costs go up, but the interest rates have come down and could continue to come down, so we’re hoping that might even it out.”