Factory taking shape

A heavy-duty crane spent all of Monday lifting pieces of concrete wall into position at Huntwood Industries’ new Liberty Lake manufacturing plant.

Each wall section, 25 feet wide and 32 feet tall, weighs 75,000 pounds.

Workers settled the 15th slab into place Monday afternoon, checking to make sure it was level and straight before temporarily attaching it to its neighbor and propping it up with heavy steel supports. A safety specialist stood nearby in a green hardhat, arms crossed, watching as people swarmed around the slab.

“We stress safety on a daily basis,” said project manager James Hunt.

The process will be repeated 108 times as the pre-poured slabs are lifted into place this week. When all is said and done, the walls will enclose a 540,000-square foot plant. Most of the floor space will be devoted to manufacturing kitchen, bath and office cabinetry. The remaining space will include a cafeteria, offices and a showroom.

The building, still just a partial shell, is expected to be completed next spring. Five semi-trailer loads of skylights are stacked next to the building, awaiting installation. “The whole building is going to be very energy efficient,” Hunt said.

Everything at the site is huge. The building itself covers 11 acres. Generous parking areas, landscaping and water-retaining ponds occupy the rest of the site. The retaining pond designed to capture the runoff from the building’s roof is nearly large enough to be called a lake when full. “It’s like a big soccer field,” Hunt said.

The company currently occupies 300,000 square feet of space in the Spokane Industrial Park and employs 750 people. Huntwood expects to employ more than 1,400 people within the next 10 years.

The Haskins Company is responsible for construction.