The Federal Bureau of Investigations will contribute some funds to the Olathe Police Department’s new firing range planned in southern Olathe.
On Tuesday, the Olathe City Council voted 6-0 to approve a 20-year memorandum of understanding with the FBI for shared use and shared cost of building the facility near 167th Street and Interstate 35.
Additionally, the city council approved an agreement with Turner Construction for the design and construction of the firing range.
Councilmember Matt Schoonover was absent from the meeting.
Firing range project to cost around $15M
- All the features of the new firing range planned in southern Olathe are still being settled, but on Tuesday, Olathe Police Chief Mike Butaud showed pictures of a police firing range under construction in Michigan off of which Olathe could base theirs.
- The plan is to build a range with some indoor and outdoor training spaces.
- In its capital improvement plan list, the city has budgeted just over $13.1 million for the project.
- The FBI will kick in another $2 million to help build it.
Olathe PD’s old firing range “is not very functional,” chief says
Olathe police officers, unlike officers in some neighboring cities, have access to a firing range that is owned by the city for their required training.
However, Butaud said the existing facility — located on the Olathe Public Safety Campus off of Old Highway 56 and Kansas Highway 7 — is starting to show its age.
Butaud described it as “not very functional” since many of the features and electronics are broken. The existing infrastructure was also not built to withstand higher-powered weapons, so officers cannot train with anything more powerful than a handgun at this facility.
“We make it as functional as we possibly can,” he said.
Additionally, the firing range was built alongside the now-demolished 1983 portion of the police department’s headquarters and has long been identified for replacement. As such, the city hasn’t been putting money into it.
In the past, Olathe had planned to build its new firing range near the Robinson Drive campus that hosts the city’s public works division and other city services in western Olathe. However, Butaud said noise studies revealed that would be an inappropriate project for that location, particularly when considering the presence of a nearby school.
So instead, the city looked elsewhere and eventually bought and then annexed roughly 96 acres near the interstate and 167th Street last year. This area is surrounded primarily by industrial development, and it can make use of interstate and railroad traffic in the area to try to buffer some of the sound coming from the range, Butaud said. Additionally, this property is near an existing firing range for the Kansas Highway Patrol as well as a rock quarry.
Plus, the size of the property opens up the door to locate more training functions there in the future, like a driving track that could be used by other city departments as well.
“We know that it’s going to meet our training needs past 2040 and beyond,” Butaud said.
Next steps:
- The design and some site prep phases for the new firing range facility are expected to continue through the next several months.
- A follow-up presentation is scheduled tentatively for early next year that will feature some of the early design plans.
- Butaud said the project will likely go to the Olathe Planning Commission for site development plan consideration early next year, followed by the city council.
- The expected completion date for the entire project is in early 2026.
- Any decisions about adding features to make the property a wider public safety training campus will come at a later date.
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