The New York City Department of Design and Construction is moving forward with a $273 million project to overhaul an NYPD training facility and shooting range on City Island, a notice published recently in the City Record shows.
The police department says the largely enclosed new facility will reduce the noise from the shooting range, also used by bomb squad trainees and Correction officers, which has been active since 1960 — and has drawn complaints from City Island residents for as long, as well as people in nearby Pelham Bay and Country Club.
The NYPD has made several attempts over the years to address the sound issue, including an aborted plan for an indoor facility across the East River in College Point and a concept to install temporary baffling that never came to fruition, The City reports.
According to a presentation that officials from the NYPD and the Department of Design and Construction (DDC) gave during a November meeting led by the 45th Precinct Community Council Rodman’s Neck Monitoring Committee the project will construct a new indoor shooting range with 150 firing points operating around the clock and also remove three of six outdoor ranges to clear space. Construction is set to begin this summer and is tentatively scheduled to be completed in late 2029, according to a NYPD spokesperson.
“This is going to really put the department in the 21st century. The training is going to be top class training there,” Amr Eldin, director of the NYPD’s capital construction unit, said at the meeting, adding that “it’s going to have almost zero to no noise at all.”
