Hewlett-Packard Co. has leased 21,400 square feet of space at the Spokane Business & Industrial Park and plans to move part of its printed-circuit assembly division there from Liberty Lake in April.


Liz Cox, spokeswoman here for the big Palo Alto, Calif.-based electronics giant, says the move is necessary because H-P has run out of room at its Liberty Lake campus, at 24001 E. Mission. The campus there is becoming crowded partly because H-P is consolidating in Spokane a portion of a printed-circuit assembly division it operates in Loveland, Colo. That consolidation, which was announced last fall, still is in progress. Cox says H-P likely wont know for certain how many people will be added to its printed-circuit assembly operation here until next fall.


To help ease the crowding, H-P plans to relocate 33 workers from Liberty Lake to the leased facility at the industrial park. Those workers will be responsible for receiving printed-circuit assembly parts, storing them, and packaging them into kits, which then will be trucked to the Liberty Lake facility for assembly.


The workers will occupy part of a relatively new building that will be outfitted with a lunch room, meeting room, and offices, Cox says. She says the renovation work likely will get under way in March.


Cox says H-P chose to relocate the kit-making function because it occupies a large amount of floor space, but employs relatively few people.


H-P employs about 260 people full- and part-time workers in its printed-circuit assembly division herealthough that number might grow as more workers move to Spokane from Lovelandand about 650 full-time workers in its other Spokane division, which makes test and measurement instruments for the wireless communications industry.