Aurora
Police & Fire
Training
Facility
A hands-on, practical training facility for Colorado first responders, built to grow with the community.
RDG teamed with local architect BRS to lead the City of Aurora Police, Fire and DAS through a comprehensive facility programming, business planning and design process that was completed within an aggressive schedule on budget and on time. The 23 acre facility is designed to allow concurrent use of training facilities by Police and Fire without disruption of training by either. The facility includes a 40,000 SF Classroom/Training Building designed to expand to 60,000 SF, a 5-story drill/training tower and clean burn building, 3-story Class A burn building, a multi-story tactical search and rescue building, urban driving track integrated into a tactical village, skills pad with straight away and perimeter live fire and transportation emergency props.
The city boasts over 108 years of well-documented history that RDG's designers interpreted and organized into a unique three-dimensional display within the training facility. The goal of the design was to organize two separate histories that would eventually grow together to represent the unification of the departments over the years. Text, photographs, fire and police equipment and tools, shadowboxes and pedestals were thoughtfully chosen to tell the story across many mediums. A digital display was incorporated to allow the two departments to share up-to-date content, ensuring the display will be relevant for years to come.