Aug. 30--Lee Air is growing four-fold, and the company hopes to lure other Wichita businesses to its new home on North Webb Road.
The longtime Wichita aerospace subcontractor filed last week for a subdivision plat to begin development of an 80-acre business and industrial park at 40th North and Webb Road, across from the north end of Jabara Airport.
The park's centerpiece will be the new 40,000-square-foot home of Lee Air Inc., an expansion driven by growth in the aviation industry.
"We're taking advantage of some outsourcing going on in the industry," said Bennie Lee Jr., Lee Air president.
"The aviation companies are concentrating on their core competencies, and we continue to concentrate on our core competencies, which give us an opportunity to land outsourced work."
The new building will allow Lee to add somewhere between 70 and 90 jobs after it opens in early 2009, Lee said.
"We're positioning ourselves for growth and capturing new opportunities," Lee said. "We've been able to position ourselves for a good chunk of new business, and we're seeking a balance between our own proprietary designs and the outsourced work -- our own design products and other folks' designs."
The development, named Webb Business Park, will have lots ranging from five to 27 acres. It also will have a 10-acre reserve with a private pond, walking path and green space to serve as an employee wellness resource.
The goal, Lee said, is to recruit about 2,000 new and retained Wichita jobs to the park.
"It will be an environment designed to attract and retain employees," he said.
"We're competing for workers in a shrinking labor market and have to add value to the recruitment and retention process."
Webb and K-96 has excellent industrial development potential, said Jerry Gray, general manager of J.P. Weigand & Sons.
"I view it at somewhat similar to the Greenwich and K-96 office park Ritchie has done," Gray said. "Kind of an industrial/service area that should be an attractive location for what industrial users are going to want."
The land was acquired from three owners, including Ritchie Corp., which operated an asphalt plant on 20 of the park's 80 acres. That area has cleared extensive environmental testing.
The Webb Business Park development team includes Bradley Tidemann of J.P. Weigand, Rob Hartman of Professional Engineering Consultants and Jeff Van Sickle and Steve Perry of McCluggage Van Sickle & Perry.
A general contractor has not been selected.
Lee Air has designed and built aircraft electronics for more than 26 years. The company has worldwide customers, with its three largest in Wichita: Cessna, Electromech Technologies and Hawker Beechcraft.
Reach Bill Wilson at 316-268-6290 or [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
To see more of The Wichita Eagle, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.kansas.com. Copyright (c) 2007, The Wichita Eagle, Kan. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
