The current training setup in the back of the township fire complex, including the foundation where the new training facility will be constructed.
Township and New Jersey officials announced on Aug. 1 that the Cherry Hill Fire Department will get $2 million in state funding for a new training facility.
The facility will be built with the intention of supporting multi-disciplinary training, including live fire and other scenario-based training. It will serve not only the township fire and police departments, but also other fire departments and partner agencies in the region.
Those include the Pennsauken, Collingswood and Voorhees fire departments, Westmont Fire Company No. 1, the Camden County Zone 5 Critical Incident Tactical Team and New Jersey State Police Teams Unit-South.
The new facility will be a permanent structure to replace the temporary building that was used for live fire training. Once it became clear that modular structure was no longer fit for necessary training, the fire department approached the state about funding a building with permanent capacity.
“We have to rebuild,” said Fire Chief Wade Houlihan. “So that’s what this was, this was a rebuild. Once we started planning it, we got in a position of saying this is the direction we want to go, that’s when we pitched it …
“This is what we need to be doing to support our regional operation and our regional training that we do,” he added. “And the state was like, ‘This is a clean hit for us. This is an easy hit. This is stuff we like to support.’”
Funding for the project was also advocated for by several members of the state Assembly, including Majority Leader Louis Greenwald, Assemblywoman Melinda Kane and Deputy Majority Whip James Beach.
The first step in building the new training center was the demolition of the previous facility by the department. That left behind only a footprint that will be used as part of the new structure’s foundation.
The first diagrams and renderings of the new building have already been created, though nothing has been finalized. Several plans are being considered and the designs will take into account the needs of both the township’s police and fire departments and its partner agencies.
Houlihan noted that being on the ground level of the project has its advantages.
“The good news is that at ground level, we have the ability to say, ‘What does this funding get us?”’ he explained. “And it puts us in such a solid, good position, much better than if we were to just go with our tax base and go with our budget.”
The fire department hopes to get a minimum of 20 years and up to 40 years out of the new structure; the old one lasted about 10 years.
“The lifespan of that type of modular building is about 10 to 15 years,” Assistant Fire Chief Brett DeLuca pointed out, “so we pretty much exhausted that. The building that we had previous to that was close to 40 years old, so that’s what we’re trying to replicate here.”
In the short term – while the facility is still in the planning phase – the fire department is using a collection of cargo containers that can be arranged into simulation buildings for scenario trainings when needed, though they can only be used on a temporary basis.
“It’s the center of the training academy,” Houlihan said of the building project. “It’s going to be the center point, and that’s crucial. To have a solid, workable centerpiece that we can get behind is going to be great for us.”
