Flush With Good News

The weather finally gave us a break – if you call temps in the 20s a break – so activity returned to the AirVenture site this week. It’s good to have things moving after a cold and snowy stretch.

Some buildings that were on blocks since last fall are finding new locations. The Young Eagles and Chapter buildings will be relocated near the corner of Waukau Avenue and Knapp Street Road. That is just north of the new control tower and west of Press Headquarters. In addition, the Protect Our Planes program building will be moving to a spot near the Winnebago County’s Sheriff’s compound, just northwest of the control tower along Waukau Avenue.

We also poured the concrete for the outer grade beam of the new Vintage area workshop building. That will allow us to put the walls up and once the frame is enclosed, we can pour the concrete floor. This project reminds me that it’s relatively easy to pour concrete footings and slabs in good weather. Throw in snow, ice, frost and below-zero temperatures, and you get a real challenge. The crews have been up to the task, though.

We’ve received questions about some improvements in Camp Scholler for this year. Here’s a big one: flush toilets! Now, before you get so excited that you need to take a pause yourself over this news, let me put it in proper context. There won’t be enough that everyone has their own private privy, but this is a major step forward in, um, comfort.

We are redoing several shower buildings in Camp Scholler for 2009. Some of those buildings had their shower stalls redone last year. Now we are adding several men’s and women’s flush toilets at the following locations:
-- The Stits building on Stits Road in the southwest part of Camp Scholler (shown above during a warmer period last summer);
-- The showers near the West Side campground store;
-- The bunkhouse shower building near the Camp Scholler security office (shown at the right in the aerial view below);
-- The North 40 showers along the perimeter road, south of Runway 9/27.

Two other shower buildings in Camp Scholler, near Paul’s Park and along Doolittle Road, need a lot more work and are in prime locations for completely new shower facilities – if not for 2009, certainly in the near future.

The three Camp Scholler toilet locations will be hooked to holding tanks, since there are no sewer lines out there. The North 40 facility, though, is close enough to city services that it can be connected to the city sewer line.

Of course, for you Oshkosh traditionalists, there will continue to be 1,000 portable toilets at central locations throughout the grounds to meet your needs, just like in the “good ol’ days.”