Ground Broken for 9th Student-Built Home

Representatives from the four mainland schools in the county, city officials and board members of the Door County Economic Development Corp. (DCEDC) turned out Sept. 6 for a symbolic groundbreaking for the DCEDC’s 2017-18 High School Home Construction Project on N. 19th Avenue in Sturgeon Bay.

DCEDC Executive Director Caleb Frostman said it was good to have the program back after a three-year absence. This will mark the ninth student-built home through the program, which in the beginning was called the Door-Kewaunee Business and Education Partnership because it included Kewaunee County students. However, last year the DCEDC Board decided to focus the program solely on Door County and renamed it the Door County Business & Education Partnership.

The students working on this project include Ben Desotelle, a junior at Gibraltar; two Sevastopol students, Eli Zielke and Tyler Dvorak, both seniors; six Sturgeon Bay students, seniors Jayson Claybaugh, Elijah Heimbecher, Jaeger Brusky, Peter Anschutz, and juniors Caleb Diller and Erik Escalera; and two Southern Door students, seniors Jared Delwiche and Caleb Buckberger.

The students will spend the first three hours of their school day working on the house until May 2018, when it will be up for sale on the open real estate market. All revenue generated from the home sale will cover program costs and any remaining will be used as seed money toward future projects.

While the students do most of the work, they do so under the leadership and guidance of advisers with the Door County Home Builders Association, which first came to the DCEDC with the idea for the program in 2005 as a way to build a skilled building trades workforce in the area.