Progressive Design-Build delivered a new training campus for the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.

St. Johns County is one of the fastest-growing in the United States, and its sheriff’s office had outgrown its operations across 20 different buildings. The county needed a consolidated, state-of-the-art training and communications facility, delivered quickly and within a publicly funded budget and entrusted The Haskell Company to make it happen.

The 61,300-square-foot campus comprises three buildings. The main administrative and training building houses a 911 dispatch center that receives more than 300,000 calls annually, a real-time crime center, offices, an auditorium, classrooms, training and locker rooms, a defensive tactics room and a virtual firearms training simulator. The building is constructed to withstand Category 5 hurricanes. Two firearms range buildings serve distinct needs: the larger range on the north side trains officers in randomized scenarios using a Jedburgh Target System, while the smaller south range supports statewide and national qualification standards for the FBI and SWAT. The campus also includes a state-certified tactical driving track and a large retention pond that doubles as a water rescue training area, complete with submerged vehicles for dive team drills. The remainder of the site is master planned for a future Sheriff’s Office headquarters.

Progressive Design-Build compressed the schedule without sacrificing cost control.

With a tight timeline and a limited budget, St. Johns County needed a way to expedite delivery. Progressive Design-Build allowed Haskell to run design and permitting concurrently, establish a guaranteed maximum price (GMP) early and begin construction without delay. Once the GMP was set, Haskell held the budget through escalating material costs and pandemic-related disruptions. The only cost increases came from owner-directed changes, including the addition of the tactical driving track, data system upgrades and additional exterior features.

Local subcontractor relationships kept the project on budget.

Haskell drew on its network of Jacksonville- and St. Augustine-area subcontractors to keep costs competitive. The team worked directly with county stakeholders to align the Sheriff’s Office wish list with available funding, presenting alternative and cost options at each stage. “We understood the challenges, and felt we had the local connections with subcontractors to help pull levers and to keep things on budget,” said Charlie Rocheleau, Haskell’s Regional Vice President.

The facility honors 40 years of public service to St. Johns County.

The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office Emergency Communications and Training Facility is a lasting tribute to Sheriff David B. Shoar, who served the county for four decades and drove this project from concept to completion. For residents, it means a safer, better-equipped public safety operation built to grow alongside one of Florida’s fastest-expanding communities.