Here’s the Dirt: Davenport schools get upgrade

Workers with Spokane construction firm Leone & Keeble Inc. are settling in for another 18 months or so of driving to and from Davenport, where they’re tackling a two-phase school project.

The general contractor’s crews are in charge of a $10.5-million expansion and remodeling project for the Davenport School District. The first phase, started last summer and running through this August, involves building a 28,000-square-foot school building with a gym.

Phase two, which should run through August 2012, is a remodel and upgrade of the district’s older elementary school building.

The new classrooms will be used, eventually, by about 150 middle school students. For as long as the district has had a high school, middle school classes were offered in the same building.

Once the new gym and middle school building is done, about 300 elementary school students will move there for a year, while the elementary building is remodeled, said Joe Coppersmith, the district’s plant operations director.

The students all go back to their assigned buildings in the fall of 2012.

“The construction team from Leone & Keeble has bent over backwards for us,” Coppersmith said.

The new building is covered with roof paper and all walls are up, said project superintendent Steve Frase. “And we’ve had great subs on this project who performed well through our nasty weather earlier in the winter,” Frase said.

Project architects are Design West, out of Pullman.

Including land and design costs, the project budget is about $14 million.

Lewiston engineering facility will boost jobs

Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Inc. has begun construction of a 105,800-square-foot engineering and manufacturing facility in Lewiston, a project founder and President Ed Schweitzer said will take jobs to many people who already have one with the company.

The plant, which will eventually employ more than 300 people, will start with a core group that has been commuting to SEL’s headquarters campus in Pullman, he said.

If customer demand justifies expansion, there is room in the 25-acre Lewiston Business and Technology Park to double the size, said Schweitzer, who noted SEL also has plants in Lake Zurich, Ill., and San Luis Potosi, Mexico.

He said the building will cost $12 million, as will the equipment that goes inside, starting with precision injection-molding machines.

Bernardo Wills is the architect, Vandervert Construction the contractor.

Completion is expected in September, Schweitzer said.

Meanwhile, in Pullman, work on a 90,000-square- foot center for introducing new equipment and training its new owners will start soon, he said.

The building will be the fourth on the SEL campus.

About 200 will be employed in the new building when operations are fully ramped up, Schweitzer said. Its $10 million cost, as well as the cost of the Lewiston plant, will be paid without borrowing money, he added.

Habitat store moves to industrial park

The Habitat Store, which sells new and used building supplies, will move April 1 from two locations to the Spokane Industrial Park, 3808 N. Sullivan Road, Building 10.

The main store, at 850 E. Trent Ave., and the Valley store, at 11410 E. Sprague Ave., both will close March 1. The main store will re-open March 21-26 only for a liquidation sale.

The new location offers more space and parking, and easier access, said Michone Preston, executive director of Habitat for Humanity-Spokane.

The Habitat Store will still offer donation pickups.

Revenue from store sales funds construction of Habitat for Humanity homes throughout Spokane County. In the past 11 years, the Habitat Store has raised more than $2 million.

Inland AV relocates

Inland Audio Visual Rentals has relocated to 1414 N. Fiske St., Suite E, said new owner Tracy Cahalan.

Cahalan has been an Inland AV employee for more than 15 years. He purchased the business from previous owner Larry Ellingson, who retired after running the business for 50 years, most recently at 27 W. Indiana Ave.

Inland AV rents projectors, sound systems, screens and other gear.