Associated Painters Inc., the Everett, Wash.-based commercial- and military-aircraft painting company with operations at Spokane International Airport, is taking preliminary steps to add a second hangar at the airport to accommodate a backlog in job orders.

Such a facility could cost up to $13 million to develop, documents from Spokane International Airport say.

Rod Friese, president of Associated Painters, says such a hangar would employ an additional 50 to 100 workers. The precise number of people needed will depend upon the facility's capacity.

Currently, the company's painting schedule is booked for the next two years. He says a lack of space to accommodate an increase in orders is causing the company to turn away new jobs. Since Associated Painters began its aircraft painting operations here in a 41,400-square-foot hangar last year, the company has completed work on 75 airplanes, Friese says.

In addition to its plans to add another painting hangar, Friese says Associated Painters also has begun taking steps to move its headquarters from Everett to Spokane. He expects it to complete that transition by Oct. 1 of next year.

"It's closer to our aerospace business here with the new hangar and the potential of additional capacity," Friese says of that decision.

He says the company will continue some painting operations in Everett, but adds that work has diminished there over the last several years.

Associated Painters currently employs 52 people here, Friese says.

"We just celebrated our first-year anniversary on Oct. 15, and last October, we had 10 employees here," he says. "We have grown to 52 (employees) in a year's time frame. We have reached capacity, and that is what is predicating the need for a second hangar."

At this time, Friese says that Associated Painters is considering a 62,500-square-foot facility that would be large enough to house a Boeing 787-900 Dreamliner or two narrow-body aircraft from Boeing's 737 series.

Spokane International Airport spokesman Todd Woodard says the Spokane Airport Board recently received statements of qualification from architecture and engineering firms for services needed to design and engineer Associated Painters' new facility.

"We want to make sure they continue their success, and the only way to do that is to get more facility," he says.

The request-for-qualifications document that was posted on the airport's website in early September lists an estimated maximum allowable construction cost for the new hangar of $13 million, though the project's actual cost depends upon final specifications which have yet to be determined.

Construction likely will begin early next year, Woodard says, so that Associated Painters would be operating out of the new hangar by late summer or early fall.

He says the airport could construct and lease the new facility to Associated Painters as it did with the company's current hangar there, or the company could finance the construction of the new hangar and lease from the airport the land on which it is to be located.

Associated Painters' existing hangar at SIA cost about $6.5 million to construct, and the company signed a 20-year lease with the airport to occupy the facility.

Woodard says that while the airport board has received several project-qualification statements from firms to design the new hangar, it hasn't yet selected a firm to complete that work, and a decision likely won't be made for another month or two.

He adds that the board also still is in the process of determining where precisely to build the new hangar, but he says it will be located adjacent to and on the same parcel as Associated Painters' current facility.

Associated Painters strips and paints aircraft for commercial airlines, the U.S. Department of Defense, private aircraft owners, and original equipment manufacturers. Aside from its operations here and in Everett, the company also has painting facilities in Oklahoma City, Jacksonville, Fla., and Goodyear, Ariz.