When the new $25 million Illiana Christian High School opens next year, Principal Peter Boonstra will be happy it has air conditioning.
The school, 2261 Indiana Ave., Lansing, was completed in 1948 and retained much of its original postwar character. Even after multiple additions, it had the original desks, outdated laboratories and no building-wide air conditioning.
“This has been a long time coming,” Boonstra said. “It would be pretty obvious that it’s time to build something new.”
The student body of nearly 500 is set to move to “Shoe Corner” on the corner of 109th Street and Calumet Avenue in Hanover Township for the 2018-19 year. The school plans to have buses running from feeder schools, including Crown Point Christian School, Highland Christian, Lansing Christian, and Calvin Christian.
For several years, Illiana Christian looked at shifting demographics as more students moved from Chicago’s south suburbs to Northwest Indiana. Illinois and Indiana now each provide about half of the students.
The ability for parents to qualify for school vouchers in Indiana was also a major factor, Boonstra said. Vouchers will “make a private school more affordable, it makes it more attractive,” added Jeff Dekker, an Illiana Christian graduate who worked on the original construction and design team.
The new 100,000-square-foot, two-story building will hold up to 550 students. The school raised about $20 million and borrowed an additional $5 million for construction.
The lower level will include classrooms, collaborative learning spaces, administrative offices, and science labs. The upper level will include classrooms and a multimedia room. The building also will also have a standard gymnasium and a smaller adjacent one where it will hold daily chapel.
It plans to build soccer fields on the school’s 37-acre lot, eventually adding baseball, softball fields and a tennis court, Boonstra said.
A second proposed construction phase would add roughly 35,000 square feet of additional classrooms and an auditorium. It also would enable enrollment of another 250 students, he said.
A capital campaign for that proposal likely would not start for several years, Boonstra said.
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