When the city of Apopka built an outdoor gun range for its police department in 1989, it did so on land in a mostly rural area.

But the city’s population has more than quadrupled since then — with nearly 62,000 residents by 2024 — and residential subdivisions have cropped up around the Cleveland Avenue facility.

As the number of homes increased so have noise complaints about the gun range. And the city’s police chief predicts more will come if another new subdivision, with about 115 homes, gets built nearby, as seems likely to happen.

“I get complaints all the time when we’re out there firing, and we’re just adding to the number of complaints we’re going to be getting with this,” Chief Michael McKinley said last week as the Apopka Development Review Committee briefly discussed the developer’s application for land-use changes and rezoning.

Still, the committee, which includes McKinley, recommended the city annex the property, as requested.

“I just want to make sure that future residents know that there is a law enforcement firearms range to the north of them,” McKinley said. “We are working on moving it, but we’re several years away,” he said. “And it is south of the direction that we shoot and that’s where the noise goes.”

The owners of the land want their 40 acres off Sheeler Avenue annexed into Apopka, and the City Council moved ahead with that when commissioners unanimously approved the annexation on the first of two required votes. The final vote is set for July 16.

During the meeting, Jonathan Huels, an attorney representing the owners, was asked about the range and its proximity to the proposed development.

“It’s over a thousand feet away and separated by an existing subdivision,” Huels said while a slide showing the property’s location was on a large screen.

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He noted that the development committee asked that home buyers be notified about “the existence of the gun range and its vicinity to the subdivision.” The developer, he said, “is agreeing to do that so there will be notice provided.”

Huels declined to speak with an Orlando Sentinel reporter at the meeting about the project or to identify the developer.

McKinney declined to be interviewed, too, but in an email Sgt. Kimberly Walsh said the police department uses the gun range about twice a week for drills using live ammunition, typically between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays.

The department does not have a count of noise complaints from the range, she said.

“However, over the years when the range is being used for law enforcement purposes our communications center will receive calls about shots being fired in the area (and) post(s) will also begin to appear on social media regarding gun shots in the area,” she wrote.

The Meadow Oaks subdivision, built mostly in the early 2000s, sits across the street from the entrance to the range, which is about 500 feet down a gravel road almost completely surrounded by dense woods. Signs at the property, enclosed by high fencing and barbed wire, state that it’s the Apopka Police Department Training Facility and visitors must check in at the police department located about two miles away. Immediately west of the range is the city’s Public Services Department.

A woman who rents a Meadow Oaks house and declined to give her name said she wasn’t told about the range when she moved into the neighborhood two years ago.

“It’s like ‘pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow,” she said about the noise. “It interrupts my morning rest. But I’m used to it now.”

The woman said she wouldn’t want to buy the house, given the range is so close, however.