Wisconsin Air Academy has lofty goals

Renderings provided by Liberty Construction Management and Allied Steel Buildings
Article by: Joe Grundle, joe.grundle@dailyreporter.com

September 12, 2007 - Building a new school in four months sounds outlandish, but Jeff Starke, founder of the Wisconsin Air Academy, is counting on it. Ground was broken Monday on the 45,000-square-foot sixth- through 12th-grade school in the village of Sturtevant, just southeast of Racine on Highway 11.

The private co-ed school, which will feature flight and emergency medical class electives offered by the Civil Air Patrol in addition to general high school and college preparatory courses, is planning to open to students on Jan. 22. The school will include 22 boarding rooms, 18 classrooms, a gymnasium, dining hall and library, aeronautics and computer labs, full-motion flight simulators, as well as baseball and football fields. It will accommodate up to 140 boarding students and 100 day students. While not technically a military school, it will incorporate the same philosophy and retired military teaching personnel, and one qualification to graduate will be acceptance into a college. Already, 24 students are enrolled with another 46 expressing interest.

Allied Steel Buildings Inc. of Florida and Louisiana-based Liberty Construction Management LLC are jointly constructing the school for just under $3 million, with Allied providing the pre-engineered steel and Liberty managing the on-site erection and interior work. Starke estimated a similar structure made with bricks and mortar would cost four times as much as the steel building. “Building a building like this instead of spending millions and millions of dollars just to have the space for children to come and be educated is awesome,” Starke said. “(Others) build $60 million campuses for 3,000 kids and can’t guarantee that they are going to pass, let alone have any career options or college prep skills. We found a way to be able to do this and do it effectively.”

Saving money, time

Building institutional facilities with pre-engineered steel -- historically used primarily for warehouses and garages -- is a growing trend due to speedy construction schedules and upgraded aesthetics. “What’s going to work out about this is the cost and time,” said Chris Rucker, project manager for Allied Steel. “The steel is all precut in the factory, then delivered, and everything bolts together, so it’s a lot more cost-effective than a concrete structure or even a lumber structure. Then you start talking about labor and the cost to actually erect the structure, and we’re talking weeks instead of months and years.”

Typical cited drawbacks to steel buildings are their unattractive appearance and high heating costs, but Rucker believes the Wisconsin Air Academy will buck those notions. “(Liberty Construction Manager Bud Durman) is putting a brick face on the exterior –- it’s not real, but you can’t tell unless you’re up close,” he said, “and (Starke and Durman) came up with a radiant-floor idea that’s going to solve a lot of the cost issues on heating and cooling.

“We can do so many things, and this structure is going to demonstrate that.” Durman said the original construction schedule was five months, but groundbreaking was delayed by prolonged environmental assessments. “The key to our success is getting the concrete poured and foundation in place and the building up and dried in before Thanksgiving,” said Durman. “Once we get the building dried in, I’ll heat it up, and everybody can bring in their margarita machines and shorts, and we’ll get it done. “We still think it’s doable.”

A Milwaukee native, Starke spent 24 years in the U.S. Navy and the last four years as director of Florida Air Academy’s middle school. He moved to Wisconsin to be closer to his family and create a similar school here using Civil Air Patrol programs. After his first site choice in Union Grove proved too expensive to remodel, Starke hooked up with Sturtevant property owner Scott Davis, who had the Highway 11 site mostly ready for new construction.

Delafield engineering firm Yaggy Colby Associates finished the site work. The Civil Air Patrol is a nonprofit, civilian auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force with more than 56,000 volunteer members that provides aerospace education, cadet programs and search-and-rescue operations with a nationwide fleet of 535 single-engine aircraft. It has squadrons in Milwaukee, Racine, Waukesha and Kenosha.

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