The General Assembly budgeted $3 million for upgrades to the ILEAS Training Center in the current fiscal year. The funds, administered by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) were directed to the City of Urbana for use by ILEAS. The City of Urbana has approved an Intergovernmental Agreement making the money available to ILEAS to begin the process. ILEAS has already engaged an architect to conduct a feasbility study on improving and expanding the ILEAS Training Center (ITC). This study will be completed around December 15, 2022. Immediately afterwards, ILEAS will engage the architect to begin the design and bidding process.
The preliminary feasibility study has identified two phases for the ITC:
- Infrastructure improvements and expansion of the tactical training space
- Expansion of classrooms/auditorium to include an indoor training building sufficiently big enough for large vehicles (i.e., mobile command posts, ITECS, etc.) and onsite warehousing of response equipment caches.
Phase 2 has yet to be funded; however, work on phase 1 is just beginning.
ILEAS wants to thank Senators Scott Bennett and Chapin Rose for their support and assistance funding this project.