Guardian Center of Georgia broke ground Wednesday afternoon at the former Northrop Facility off Thompson Road in Perry. The company's executives were joined by Houston County and Perry officials.
According to the Georgia Department of Economic Development, this business will bring in $75 million to Houston County at full capacity.
The Georgia company is creating an advance disaster training facility for first responders to train for man-made and environmental disasters.
They will be building a replica of a Seattle cityscape, a flooded neighborhood to emulate the 9th Ward in New Orleans, and 1800 foot dual subway system on the 830 acre site.
Burkart said when they were trying to figure out where in the Southeast that they were going to build this facility, Perry was at the top of the list.
"We got Hartsfield 90 miles away and it had to have the remoteness to perform alot of the kinds exercises that we need to do here," said Burkart.
Burkart said when the company is at full capacity, they will employ about 100 people full-time. They are looking for people to fill positions in operations, engineering, logistics, client services and administration.
The company said they plan on training first responders on the national, state and international level and can train about 5,000 at at time.
Burkart said the Guardian Center of Georgia will provide realistic training to these first responders. He said the realistic settings and the element of surprise will have first responders asking the same question they would if they were in a disaster.
"First of all who's in charge, second of all how are you going to muster and organize the resources that you have at your disposal, who makes those decisions," said Burkart.
The company said they started construction on the former Northrop facility site last week.
They are hoping to have the facility completed by February 2013.