Barrier Industries Inc., of Spokane, says it has begun constructing three buildings at its 80-acre industrial park in Airway Heights, and plans to build three more structures there later this year.


The park, which is located in southwest Airway Heights, west of Lawson Road and south of 21st Avenue, already is the site of four buildings that together contain about 160,000 square feet of floor space.


When all six buildings that Barrier Industries plans are completed, probably by the end of this year, the industrial park will have 10 buildings with a total of more than 300,000 square feet of floor space, says company owner John Barrier. Barrier envisions that the park, which is called the West Spokane Industrial Park, eventually will have more than 1 million square feet of floor space.


The six new metal buildings are expected to cost a total of between $3 million and $3.5 million to build, Barrier says.


Barrier Industries recently wrapped up work on the parks fourth building. Two-thirds of that 36,000-square-foot structure already has been leased by a national company that plans to move its Spokane branch there soon, and by a new Spokane company called Industrial Surplus.


Barrier declines to name the national company, which will occupy about 12,000 square feet of space in the building. Industrial Surplus, which buys, repairs, and resells damaged or slightly defective industrial equipment, already has moved into about 12,000 square feet of space in the building. Barrier is seeking tenants for the remaining 12,000 square feet of space there.


The other three buildings within the park house such tenants as Automotive Repair Corp., Shredaway, and L&M Precision Fabrication.


The three, 30,000-square-foot buildings currently under construction in the park are expected to be completed by the end of the summer. Theyre going up along Lawson Road on the eastern edge of the park.


Barrier says one of those buildings already has been leased to a Spokane business called Charlies Boat & RV Storage. That business had occupied about 20,000 square feet of space in a 30,000-square-foot building elsewhere in the park.


Barrier says Charlies agreed to vacate space in the other building so that the buildings other main occupant, Connor Sports Flooring Corp., an Amasa, Mich.-based company that makes portable playing floors, could expand there, taking nearly the entire building. Connor Sports Flooring recently acquired Powerlock Portable Floors LLC, of Blanchard, Idaho.


The two other buildings that are under construction, as well as the three buildings that are planned to get under way later this year, are being constructed on a speculative basis.


The size of the final three buildings hasnt been determined yet. Barrier says hes looking for a variety of tenants, including manufacturing and fabrication companies, to lease space in those buildings.


He says the structures will provide space for smaller contractors who may have outgrown their current locations and are looking for a place to store their equipment and supplies.


This is the quietest kept secret in Spokane, Barrier says of the Airway Heights industrial park. About a dozen businesses and more than 200 people work at the park, which Barrier began developing in 1992. Barrier Industries is acting as its own general contractor on the construction projects.