College builds a quiet suburban street for anti-terror training.

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- What now looks like the beginnings of a suburban residential neighborhood will soon become a state-of-the-art anti-terrorism training center for police, fire and other emergency workers.

Black-topped streets, light posts and fire hydrants cut through the 22 acres of grassy land that over the next year will be transformed into the Combined, Regional Emergency Services Training Center.

The center, which will be run through Oakland Community College's Auburn Hills campus, has been in the works for years, but college officials said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have prompted them to expand it.

Originally budgeted at $6 million, the center was intended for police, fire and EMS training for situations such as high-heat fires, severe auto wrecks and barricaded gunmen.

Expansion plans now include training for biological warfare and responses to other kinds of terrorist attacks. The project's budget has expanded as well, to about $12 million.

The attacks also have sped up construction.

"We originally planned to have the three houses and some of the other buildings done by the end of the year," said William Furtaw, the college's director of public services and director of the center. "But now everything is expected to be done by then because of the need."

Once finished, it will be one of the few facilities in the country dedicated to interagency training fox these kinds of situations, Furtaw said.

Furtaw, who served as a deputy director of public safety in Grosse Pointe Park, Mich., before joining the college, said sites geared toward just police or just fire training are common. But permanent facilities that require the different agencies to work together are rare.

The center, which will be used to fight global terrorism, is the former home to a Cold War-era Nike missile site, he said. The silo has since been disarmed and filled in.

Officials expect the center to offer intensive training to more than 4,000 firefighters, police and emergency medical workers each year. Because of the site's proximity to the college's police academy, it's also expected to be incorporated into the curriculum.

The college also hopes to market the center to out-of-state police agencies and the federal government.

When completed, it will look like a small city and will include three houses, a school, bank, motel and a convenience store with a gas station. There also will be a building where fires can be set inside for training purposes without destroying the structure.

Furtaw said the most valuable benefit of the center will be the increases in safety for both the public and the emergency workers.

"This allows people to make mistakes," he said. "We want them to make them here and not on the public."

For example, the fire building will allow firefighters to practice putting out fires and get accustomed to the smoke and poor visibility.

In the past, many departments set old or abandoned structures on fire to practice. But the lack of control over the situations sometimes resulted in firefighters getting hurt or killed, he said.

If someone makes a mistake in the fire building, instructors can turn off the gas, pull out the firefighters and then make them do it again.

Most of the original $6 million for the project is coming from college funds and a state grant. But the college is seeking corporate, private and municipal donations to pay for the expansion costs. Part of that money is expected to come from naming rights to buildings, roadways, classrooms and individual training facilities.

"You can build a lot of good things with this," Furtaw said. "We're not limited by our imagination, just our budget."

Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said the new center will be an invaluable resource for his department. He agreed that the recent terrorist attacks heighten the need for a center like this.

"It lets police, fire and EMS deal with real-life scenarios together," he said. "And when you practice together you can find and work out problems you might not know exist before a real emergency happens."

Bouchard said a group of his officers recently trained with fire, hazardous materials and other emergency workers at a temporary site on the college's Farmington Hills campus. But he said the exercises were hard to plan and very disruptive to the campus' regular activities.