The expansion of Belleville Township High School District 201’s Center for Academic and Vocational Excellence, or CAVE, is one step closer to becoming a reality.

The expansion — in the form of a 15,000-square-foot annex — will allow the district to expand its programming for aviation and healthcare and establish new programming for automation, manufacturing and robotics and advanced business applications.

Kaskaskia Engineering Group in Belleville is the project manager for the annex like it was for the renovation of the main CAVE facility at the former Kings Point property at 7645 Magna Drive. Gray Design Group in St. Louis, MO, is providing architectural consulting services.

The district now has renderings for the annex, which will be a five-part metal-clad structure to the southeast of the 100,000-square-foot CAVE building, on the edge of the current parking lot.

The industrial-looking annex will have a similar aesthetic to the main facility with its signature green and white colors. It will have no interior hallways, with entry and exit to the rooms through doors along the northwestern wall of the building.

Two-fifths of the building will be an aviation lab, one-fifth will be for healthcare and one-fifth will be for automation, manufacturing and robotics, according to Superintendent Brian Mentzer.

“There’s one-fifth of the building that we’re still thinking about,” he said at Monday’s board meeting.

While the district initially talked about using it for advanced business applications, it is instead going to vacate some space in the bottom of the main CAVE building that is better suited for that purpose.

The remaining one-fifth of the annex might be used as a meeting or flex space. “It’s just going to give us some room to expand as needs come along,” Mentzer said.

The CAVE serves as Belleville 201’s alternative school for at-risk students and a trade school where Belleville West and East students can come for part of their school day to get dual-credit vocational training in a variety of fields. Its doors opened to students in the fall of 2022, serving about 210 students in the first year and about 250 students this year, according to Mentzer.

Assistant Superintendent Dustin Bilbruck said at Monday’s board meeting that the district hopes to hold a public bid for construction of the annex in early February and, if that happens, to complete the project by the end of June, allowing time to move in and prepare for serving students starting in the fall of 2024.

The district is paying for the expansion with up to $7 million in general obligation bonds it issued and sold at the beginning of the school year.

Solar may be the power source

The district is also exploring the option to power both the main CAVE building and the forthcoming annex with solar, initially proposing it at Monday’s board meeting.

“We have looked at solar specifically, more intentionally, at Belleville West for about the last seven or eight years. It just hasn’t been attainable,” Mentzer said. That’s because the high school doesn’t have enough ground or roof space to accommodate solar panels.

“The CAVE does,” he said. The panels would be installed on the southwestern half of the main building’s roof facing Illinois Route 15.

There are many incentives for solar now, according to Mentzer, namely Illinois’ smart inverter rebate and solar renewable energy credits as well as the solar investment tax credit that was extended by the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress in 2022.

The district hopes to have a final proposal for solar with the details fleshed out in November as well as the final building proposal for the annex.

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