Construction will start next week on a $17.5 million charter school, the Banning Lewis Preparatory Academy, in a large master-planned community in northeast Colorado Springs.

A groundbreaking ceremony will be held 11 a.m. Thursday at the site, 9433 Vista Del Pico Blvd.

City dignitaries, representatives from the development’s three primary homebuilders, education officials and other community members will mark the event.

The project has been two-and-a-half years in the making, said Heather Zambrano, executive director of the Banning Lewis Ranch Academy Foundation.

It’s an expansion of the Banning Lewis Ranch Academy, a kindergarten through eighth-grade school that opened in the Banning Lewis Ranch development 10 years ago.

The new school will be for sixth through 12th grades and will accommodate 1,050 students. It will open in the fall of 2017 and phase in high school grades, starting with 175 freshmen.

The board of Falcon School District 49, the charter school’s authorizer, gave approval for the new school last December.

“It won’t look like any other high school in the region,” Zambrano said.

The 80,000-square-foot two-story building will resemble its sibling, the Banning Lewis Ranch Academy, which is about one mile away from the coming high school and has 800 elementary and middle school students. That building will be for grades K-5 when the new school opens.

“The current school is non-traditional and looks like a big barn. The new high school will be a big box shape with a more contemporary look,” Zambrano said.

The design will “play off the Craftsman style that Banning Lewis has going on, using cultured stone and residential lap siding to fit within the neighborhood,” said JaDee Harsma, project architect and senior associate with DLR Group.

Features include a gymnasium in the center that opens to the commons area. A media center will have an open concept with “soft seating for blended learning – classes and online courses,” Harsma said.

Located in Village 2 of Oakwood Homes, a real estate developer and homebuilder that owns 2,600 acres of the 24,000-acre Banning Lewis Ranch, the school will be built adjacent to sports fields the City of Colorado Springs Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services Department owns.

Behind the new building is vacant land for a potential new D-49 elementary school, which is contingent on voters approving a mill levy override in November.

The charter school switched management companies earlier this year, from Mosaica Education to Accel Schools.

“The management company acts as our back office experts in human resources, financial management, technology systems and marketing,” Zambrano said.

Curriculum at the high school will be college-prep and focus on preparing well-rounded students with a liberal arts education, she said.

“The area is growing, and it’s a great school,” Harsma said. “They have a very dedicated board and parents. I think it’s going to be really successful.”

The groundbreaking for the high school comes on the heels of Colorado Springs City Council’s decision on Tuesday to change 153 vacant acres in Banning Lewis Ranch from industrial zoning to neighborhood residential and commercial use.

That will allow construction of an additional 135.63-acre residential development east of Marksheffel Boulevard and south of the Barnes Road extension, as well as 17.7 acres of commercial development.

At this time, Banning Lewis Ranch Academy is the only school in the massive development, which occupies one-third of the city’s land to the east. Charter schools are public schools that receive state funding and do not charge tuition but have a separate governing board and more leeway with curriculum, finances and other aspects of operation.

The new school will be financed through private bonds.