Welch Comer & Associates Inc., a consulting civil engineering company based in Coeur dAlene, is opening a 12-person office in Liberty Lake.


For its new office, the company will lease about 2,000 square feet of space in a new building at 2310 N. Molter, says Larry Comer, Welch Comers president. The office is expected to open next month.


Welch Comer will fill almost all of the positions in its new office with transfers from among the 33 employees in the companys Coeur dAlene office, which is located at 1626 Lincoln Way, Comer says.


The new office will serve current and potential clients in Washington state, including in Spokane, Colville, Newport, and Chewelah currently, he says.


Welch Comer provides consulting civil engineering and surveying services to municipalities, counties, and utility districts in North Idaho, Eastern Washington, and Western Montana, Comer says. It wants to expand its markets, however, and provide more civil-engineering services to commercial and residential developers, he says. Some of the staff members who will be transferred to the Liberty Lake office have expertise in those areas, and will pursue that kind of work from the new office, he says.


Meanwhile, freeing up space in the Coeur dAlene office, which the company has occupied since 1996, also will give Welch Comer the capacity to hire more people to work there in the future, Comer says.


It allows us to grow, he says.


Comer joined what was then V. David Welch Associates in 1979, and became owner and president of the company in 1986, when V. David Welch died.