MidAmerican Aerospace readying new Cedar Rapids home

CEDAR RAPIDS - Landing gear, jet engine cowling, avionics and other parts for commercial airliners will replace consumer goods and blue light specials next summer at a former Kmart in southwest Cedar Rapids.

Primus Construction is renovating the 117,000-square-foot building at 2727 16th Ave. SW for MidAmerican Aerospace. The company expects to move there July 1 from its current 45,000-square-foot headquarters at 280 Blairs Ferry Road NE.

MidAmerican Aerospace buys and dismantles retired aircraft, and then sells or leases their engines and aircraft parts that are overhauled and returned to service.

Managing Director John Huey said the planes typically are flown to 'boneyards” in Arizona and California where they are dismantled and the parts are crated for shipping to Cedar Rapids.

'We hire teardown crews and send our people to supervise them. We have to make sure that everything is done to specifications and identified correctly,” he said.

'Certain avionics may require a 5-inch ‘tail' of wire if it is hard-wired into the aircraft. If the wire is cut shorter than 5 inches, the part is considered beyond economical repair. You can have a $5,000 or $10,000 item that suddenly becomes a doorstop.”

Huey said many aircraft parts buyers require what is called a 'back to birth trace.”

'Every time a part is removed, replaced, repaired or adjusted, there is a record of it,” Huey said. 'When an aircraft is sold, all of the records travel with it and the Federal Aviation Administration still requires original documentation. We cannot get away with digitizing everything.”

Huey said MidAmerican Aerospace might get a call from customer, for example, when an aircraft on approach was unable to get the nose wheel to pivot from storage to landing position.

'If the airplane does not sustain significant damage when the nose ultimately makes contact with the runway, the airline or owner of the aircraft wants to get it back into service as soon as possible,” he said. 'After determining that we have the correct nose gear assembly, the next question is how soon can it be shipped. Typically the last question is how much will it cost.”

Huey said MidAmerican Aerospace will have 100,000 square feet of warehouse, shipping, receiving and processing space, 10,000 square feet of offices and a 7,000-square-foot employee fitness center. The building will have a new entrance on the west end, several new loading docks and a large overhead door at the east end of the building for large aviation components.

A building that houses a Dollar General store west of the former Kmart will be demolished to make way for a parking area. Huey said Dollar General has a lease through July 31.

'We are installing all new windows and doors at that end of the building,” he said. 'We also are installing a new sprinkler system as well as a new heating, ventilation and air conditioning system.”

MidAmerican Aerospace received a 10-year, declining scale partial tax exemption averaging 44 percent per year, applied only to the increased property valuation. The 2015 assessed value for the property is $2.6 million.

Based on the scope of the project, the increased assessed value for the facility is estimated at $3.5 million. The renovation would generate an additional $133,000 in property tax revenue annually.

Huey said the company's existing building on Blairs Ferry Road NE has just under 20,000 square feet of warehouse and inventory storage space. He said the new building will more than quadruple that area, enabling the company to handle more parts for larger airliners.