Chesapeake is moving ahead with a $150 million public safety training academy on a 52-acre campus that will prepare fire, police and sheriff personnel, while neighboring Virginia Beach has set aside $82 million for its own law enforcement academy and is still deciding exactly where to put it. The two cities once talked about sharing a single regional facility. That plan fell apart.
According to The Virginian-Pilot, Hampton Roads’ largest cities have committed millions of dollars to build their own new public safety training academies rather than partnering with other localities on a shared regional facility. Chesapeake’s project has been a City Council priority for years, the paper reports, and city leaders moved forward with their own academy because meeting public safety personnel training needs was considered a critical priority. A procurement posting for the Chesapeake academy went out May 21, 2026, with bids due by July 27, 2026, according to a solicitation listed on govdash.com.
Why the Regional Plan Collapsed
The idea of a shared facility wasn’t always off the table. When Virginia Beach City Manager Patrick Duhaney was hired in 2020, he initially discussed the possibility of collaborating with Chesapeake on a new joint training facility, the same Virginian-Pilot report notes. Chesapeake, too, had discussed a regional partnership and joint academy with neighboring cities at one point. Ultimately, the two cities ended those discussions after a joint facility was determined not to be feasible.
The Pilot’s reporting does not spell out every detail behind that call, beyond citing operational needs and scheduling as considerations. So each city is now charting its own course, and the price tags are steep.
Virginia Beach Weighs an Aging School Building Against Open Land
Virginia Beach’s current law enforcement training grounds sit in a former city elementary school building off Birdneck Road, which has served police cadets and incoming sheriff’s deputies for more than 25 years. The Pilot reports that facility can no longer support the department’s current training needs. The City Council has requested cost analyses of two potential replacement sites: the existing 20-acre academy property, and roughly 167 acres of undeveloped land off Princess Anne Road in the Landstown area, which sits within the city’s Interfacility Traffic Area.
Developing the Landstown tract carries its own complications. The site would require extending water, sewer, electrical and other utilities, and the Pilot’s report notes that could add up to $30 million in unknown development costs beyond the project’s core budget. A separate planning account from citizenportal.ai, meanwhile, describes a roughly $82.6 million construction estimate and an $8.6 million design-phase request tied to the project — figures that have not been independently reconciled with the City Council’s $82 million set-aside.
A Dive Pool and Room to Grow
Whichever site wins out, Virginia Beach officials envision an academy built to do more than train the city’s own police department and sheriff’s office. The Pilot reports the facility could also host regional training opportunities and classes for law enforcement professionals, potentially drawing officers from across the United States. Plans under discussion include the possibility of building in phases, connecting to future project sites, and adding elements such as a dive pool.
The city expects design work to take more than a year and construction to take another two, per the Pilot’s reporting. Virginia Beach has also formally sought architectural and engineering qualifications for the project, according to a request for qualifications listed on highergov.com covering replacement of the Law Enforcement Training Academy.
Hampton Roads Already Has a Patchwork of Academies
The push toward separate academies isn’t happening in a vacuum. The region’s five largest police departments — Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Newport News, Chesapeake and Hampton — already each operate their own academies, the Pilot notes. At the same time, a newer regional option exists: a 35,000-square-foot training academy opened in Newport News in April 2026, serving Suffolk and Portsmouth along with smaller departments. Per WAVY, that facility now trains officers and deputies for more than 50 agencies across Hampton Roads.
That regional model has a complicated history. Newport News and Hampton actually left an earlier regional training program to form their own academies in 2009 and 2011, respectively, before Newport News’s new facility reopened this year as a shared resource. The academy leases its building for $1 million annually over the next decade, with costs shared among member agencies. Virginia Beach, too, already runs a regional option of its own — the Creeds Law Enforcement Training Facility, which WAVY describes as operated by the Virginia Beach Police Department and serving as a regional training center that has received funding for improvements.
The Stakes for New Officers
Behind the site-selection debates is a basic training pipeline that every Virginia agency has to meet. State law gives law enforcement officer trainees 12 months after employment to complete compulsory minimum training standards, according to the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services. Once a trainee finishes that minimum training at an academy, they must pass the state certification exam before officially becoming certified.
Hampton Roads’ current patchwork traces back decades. The Hampton Roads Criminal Justice Training Academy expanded its own participation after the state reduced funding in 1981, a cut that caused several regional criminal justice training academies elsewhere to close, according to hrcjta.org. Whether Chesapeake and Virginia Beach’s new, separately funded academies end up reshaping that regional landscape again remains to be seen — for now, each city is simply building its own.
