Collinsville Area Vocational Center to get $25M facelift

By Devese “Dee” Ursery

[email protected] 

COLLINSVILLE — The Collinsville Area Vocational Center is a two-year, public vocational training center for high school juniors and seniors throughout Madison County is getting an upgrade.

CAVC is getting $24 million for renovations and upgrades to increase the space for students and equipment as the current location is housed on the campus of Collinsville High School.

CAVC is a cooperative program which includes students from Civic Memorial High School, Dupo High School, East Alton-Wood River High School, Edwardsville High School, Highland High School, Lebanon High School, Mascoutah High School and Triad High School. 

“Our current facilities are over 50 years old and the shop spaces for our industrial classes are very tight,” CAVC Director Joe McGinnis. “The new facility will have larger shop spaces to allow for a safer learning environment and larger modern equipment.”

McGinnis said the expansion is very important because they can not only enroll more students but have our spaces be as close to industry standards as possible, as well. 

Once the new facility is built, McGinnis anticipates growing from the current 16 programs and 580 students to 22 plus programs with more than 800 students. The idea is to set that aside for industrial arts, and then reorganize and modernize the existing building for other training programs.

 McGinnis said the new CAVC expansion project will not only be a whole new building, but also renovations of the existing building. The new building will be located across Caseyville Road from the current CAVC/CHS campus. There will also be new courses added to the curriculum, to include: Landscape Management, Urban Agriculture, HVAC and Aviation Mechanics.

The $25 million grant for this project came from an appropriation set aside by the State of Illinois and will flow through the Department of Commerce Economic Opportunity as a part of Rebuild Illinois. 

FGM Architecture will be the the designer and Oates would be providing the engineering services, respectively. Holland Construction will be acting as the Construction Manager. Construction of the project is set to begin at the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2025 and the estimated completion date is April of 2026, according to McGinnis.