The new terminal at the Williamson County Regional Airport will include an innovative product.
The building will feature laminated bamboo structural beams created by SIU-Carbondale graduate Luke Schuette, who is the COO of a company called Lamboo.
Schuette showed off his creation on the airport's construction site Tuesday. He says he began researching bamboo while a college student in 2003 and found it to be three times stronger than wood, more aesthetically pleasing and the most rapidly renewable resource on the planet.
"There's not very many products that do these three things: performance, aesthetics and sustainability. So, that's where were extremely excited to have a material and bring it to market where it does all those applications."
Travis Pruitt is the project manager for Poettker Construction. He says the bamboo compares to glue laminated beams, but is better overall.
"Their qualities are a lot better for strength-wise and stability. You see with how they're holding the steel beams from cross-moving. They worked real well for making that stability up there."
Airport manager Doug Kimmel says he was sold after a consultant told him the bamboo is stronger than wood and more cost-effective.
"It looks better than that material and the other factors that were involved with the guy being an SIU graduate and then the Illinois-based company and the sustainable material, again, it just got back to why would we go with anything else?"
Schuette says this project is special to him because it brings him back to southern Illinois, where he learned the structural process as a college student.
"It all started here, right here at Southern Illinois University. We are extremely pleased. We have received a lot of positive encouragement from faculty instructors to go after this and pursue this after I graduated. And it all started here, so we're extremely pleased to be here."
The beams are helping fortify the roof of the new terminal building, which is set to open in October 2016.
