A $225 million plan to build a unified training academy for New York City's police, correction, and other enforcement agencies in College Point, Queens, is dead. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has canceled the project his predecessor, Eric Adams, had championed as a way to consolidate training for more than a dozen city agencies under one roof.
Mamdani has officially canceled his predecessor's plans for a new unified Public Safety Academy, according to City & State New York, which first reported the cancellation. City Hall confirmed the move, telling the outlet, “We stopped plans for the previously proposed public safety academy.” The New York Post also reported on the decision, noting the facility had been expected to break ground earlier this year.
The project's roots go back nearly a decade. Then-Mayor Bill de Blasio announced in 2017 that the city would budget $100 million for a state-of-the-art correction academy, and in 2021, months before leaving office, he said it would be built next to the existing police academy in College Point, per the same City & State account. That 2021 funding was intended to create a Department of Correction training facility on the NYPD academy campus.
Adams Expanded the Project Before Leaving Office
Eric Adams later expanded the plans well beyond corrections, folding in training for smaller city law enforcement teams including sanitation and parks personnel, according to the same report. The expanded proposal carried a price tag of $225 million.
A separate 2024 account from the New York Daily News reported the city would spend at least $225 million on the Queens facility, with construction set to start in early 2026 and completion expected by early 2030. That report described the project as meant to centralize training for municipal agencies with enforcement arms, including the NYPD, which otherwise train at separate facilities around the city. A city press release posted to nyc.gov around the same time described the academy as accommodating 16 agencies, including the New York City Department of Sanitation Police — the two accounts differ on the exact agency count.
An earlier design for the correction-focused version of the project, detailed by the Queens Eagle, called for a four-story building with 114,000 square feet of usable space and 240 parking spaces, also carrying an estimated $225 million cost. That version was expected to be completed by 2027, the same year the Department of Correction was slated to move off Rikers Island entirely.
Mamdani Opposed the Price Tag Long Before Taking Office
Mamdani's skepticism toward the project predates his mayoralty. During a 2024 interview, he said, “We do not need to spend more than $200 million on a ‘Cop City’ training facility in Queens,” according to City & State. He and most of the other 2025 Democratic mayoral primary candidates likened the proposal to Atlanta's controversial training center, often nicknamed “Cop City,” which drew sustained activist opposition.
Atlanta's project offers a point of comparison, though its own numbers vary by source. The BBC reported that Atlanta's City Council approved $31 million in public funding toward the 85-acre campus, officially called the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, with the remainder of a roughly $90 million project covered by private donations. A more recent Brookings Institution analysis put the facility's overall price tag at $115 million. Brookings also noted that more than five dozen activists were charged over an alleged conspiracy to halt construction, with protests continuing at the site as of September 2023.
Mamdani has also had to manage his own record on policing. He has faced criticism over past comments describing the NYPD in harsh terms, and City & State reported that he has since distanced himself from and apologized for those remarks.
Project Originated Under a Different Mayor and a Different Vision
The training academy initiative originated under de Blasio as a correction academy blueprint, which the Adams administration expanded into a broader public safety hub intended to break down silos among the many city agencies that carry law enforcement powers. With Mamdani's cancellation, that vision — nearly a decade and two mayoral administrations in the making — will not move forward in College Point as planned.
