After eight years of sending its police recruits across the state to train, Newark announced on Monday it will soon have a space to train its own.

The city unveiled plans for a new $49 million police and fire training complex in the South Ward that officials intend to open as a certified police academy in two years. The 125,000 square-foot complex on Bergen Street will replace a shuttered -- and fire-ravaged -- public school that has long been a blight in the neighborhood.

It's a major boon for the city -- both as it continues efforts to bolster its police force and revitalize neighborhoods outside of the downtown.

"This is a home run on many different levels," Mayor Ras Baraka said at a press conference at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church that sits across the future training facility.

"It was an eyesore and it caught on fire and now it's even in worse condition than it was previously," said Baraka, who grew up in the area. He said the state-of-the-art complex will not only train police and fire officers under the same roof, but allow the city to get re-certified and once again open a police academy for new recruits.

.@CityofNewarkNJ Police Academy lost its certification in 2010. Since then it has spent $1 M to train new recruits across the state. New training facility in South Ward would return academy training to the city @rasjbaraka said pic.twitter.com/s8RtVik4mR — Karen Yi (@karen_yi) April 30, 2018

Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose said the city's police academy lost its certification in 2010 and since 2014, the department has spent about $1 million to train more than 400 recruits elsewhere in the state.

While the city has an in-service training facility on Lincoln Avenue, it is not certified to train new recruits. The fire training facility on Orange Street will eventually be moved to the new complex.

"This is long overdue," Ambrose said. "It's never been done under one roof, the training of police and fire."

The Newark Police Division is also under a federal consent decree after a federal probe in 2016 uncovered civil rights abuses by officers. The facility will help police officers train as new policies, required under the decree, are written and passed.

The William H. Brown Academy will be demolished and converted into a police and fire training facility, city officials said. (Karen Yi | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

The three-story William H. Brown Academy closed in 2009 and sits on a roughly two-acre property at 695 Bergen Street. Last year, a fire tore through the building, destroying its roof.

The property, owned by Newark Public Schools, was one of 12 closed schools conveyed to the Newark Housing Authority to sell. William H. Brown was the only one that did not sell.

Victor Cirilo, executive director of the housing authority, said the city will close on the property in the next two months and pay the school district $1.2 million -- the highest bid on the property before the fire tore through the building.

"We're not deviating from our commitment to Newark Public Schools," Cirilo said.

Cirilo said the housing authority will serve as the redeveloper on the training facility and float $49 million in bonds on behalf of the city. He said the priority will be demolishing the building, expected to cost an additional $2 million.

"From my tenure here, it's been complaints on a weekly basis, the garbage is building up, people are breaking in," Cirilo said. "Newark continues to revitalize and the mayor wants to make sure that this revitalization extends into all the neighborhoods."

The 125,000 three-story training complex will boost police presence in the neighborhood and train 1,700 fire and police personnel every year, officials said.

There will a parking lot, rooftop track, weight room, computer labs and a community engagement room.

Karen Yi may be reached at kyi@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @karen_yi or on Facebook.