Facing pressure to grow the police force, the Dallas City Council on Wednesday approved a contract to build a new training academy.

The council hired Swinerton Builders to oversee planning and construction of the Dallas Police Department Law Enforcement Training Center on a 20-acre site at the University of North Texas at Dallas.

Under the agreement, the city will pay Swinerton Builders up to $150,000 for preconstruction work from February through October.

The company will earn a management fee of nearly 1.9% of capped construction costs of $150 million. If construction costs reach that limit, the firm could earn about another $2.8 million.

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The deal also requires Swinerton Builders to have the training center built by June 2028 and stay within the budget.

The project is part of an estimated $275 million initiative to upgrade Dallas’ police training facilities, including $185 million for the UNT Dallas training center and $90 million for a future public safety complex.

The new facilities would replace the current police training grounds in Red Bird, which opened in 1990 as a temporary site and remains the city’s main police training center.

Council member Lorie Blair said the new center is essential for the department and expressed hope construction would be completed “within a couple of years.”

“If we can’t produce the perfect police officers to do the job we need, we cannot be the city we need it to be,” Blair said.

City officials say the new training center is critical to boosting police staffing levels required by the charter. Voters approved a November 2024 amendment requiring at least 4,000 officers. Officials said earlier this month there were 3,286.

In December, city and project officials reported an $88.5 million funding gap for the new UNT Dallas-based training facility, with only $96.5 million secured so far.

Jennifer Staubach Gates, a member of the DPD Law Enforcement Training Center Task Force, said the latest agreement would allow the group to move forward with private fundraising. She said the project probably would break ground in the fall.