Crest Hill City Council approves first responder training facility with proposed gun range

Crest Hill — The Crest Hill City Council voted Monday in favor of plans for a first responder training facility proposed by the Lockport Township Fire Protection District, including an outdoor gun range.

The council voted 5-3 in favor of the training facility.

A separate vote on the gun range itself was 5-4 in favor, with Mayor Raymond Soliman needing to cast the tie breaking vote.

Alderperson Tina Oberlin voted in favor of the training facility but opposed the gun range.

While support for the fire and emergency training facility was generally high in the city, the gun range portion of the project drew significant criticism from some residents, particularly in Ward 2 where the facility will be located next to the Stateville Correctional Center.

Multiple residents signed a petition to prevent the construction of the outdoor range. The petition gained support from the Ward 2 Council Members Claudia Gazal and Darrell Jefferson.

“I think everything else is great for the community, it’s just the gun range I’m opposed to,” Jefferson told the Herald-News last week. “We’re already dealing with two gun ranges, and a third one just adds more noise pollution.”

Noise, safety, and concerns about ground pollution were all referenced by residents worried that the new addition would diminish their quality of life or property values.

At Monday night’s meeting, four people addressed the City Council in favor of the project while four others spoke in opposition.

The facility will be built on 13 acres of property located on the south side of Division Street west of Broadway Street and east of Weber Road in Crest Hill and will be used to host classes and diverse training exercises using a four-story burn tower structure, a man-made diving pond, a K-9 training area and the outdoor shooting range.

Plans for the facility have been in the works for nearly two years and have evolved over time. In order to address concerns about noise from the gun range, which will be the third within the city, LTFPD has worked with sound engineers on the design to mitigate noise.

According to LTFPD Chief John O’Connor, the range will be surrounded on three sides by 24-foot high berms, which should reduce the noise of a gunshot to between the volume of a whisper and a normal human conversation.

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

The facility will offer opportunities for police and firefighters to practice live fire training drills, HAZMAT simulations, water rescue and dive exercises, K9 training, vehicular extraction simulation, and drone search exercises.

The campus will also include classroom spaces for furthering education and maintenance bays for emergency vehicles.

The land for the project was granted to the LTFPD by the state of Illinois for free. While the project is estimated to cost $16 million, construction of the facility is not anticipated to raise taxes for residents of the district, which includes territory in Lockport, Crest Hill, and Romeoville.

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

O’Connor said he hopes to have construction on the project commence later in 2025, and be completed in about one year.

The gun range would be paid for by the Lockport Police Department.