Lemex scheduled to begin operations this month

Vic Fedeli has been working for five years to put himself out of a job and this year he expects to succeed in doing so.

Fedeli and the Air Base Property Corp (ABPC), after a recent deal with Lemex Aviation of Montreal, are left with one vacant hangar and enough serviced property at North Bay Aerospace Centre to build another to sell.

The ABPC chairman is confident they will be able to announce a tentative deal for what remains by March.

"We will be out of land, out of money and in a position to dissolve," Fedeli says. But that may not be the end of new aerospace industries coming to North Bay.

"There are expansion possibilities," Fedeli explains. When the city took ownership of Jack Garland Airport from Transport Canada, it also acquired 1,700 acres of unserviced air side land.

"While it requires servicing, it's an absolutely fantastic opportunity for growth. We certainly hope that the city will continue to develop the aerospace industry."

Meanwhile, the focus is on Lemex, a custom and made-to-measure aerospace parts manufacturer, that is setting up shop in a former military hangar for a mid-January start up, and on selling the remaining leftovers from Canadian Forces Base North Bay.

"We feel it is in the best interests of the site" if the remaining space is sold to complementary businesses, Fedeli says. Ideally, "we would like to see someone who would manufacture their own aircraft."

Fedeli is mum on potential buyers, but Lemex, which is hiring about 40 workers, mainly machinists, is already considering expansion.

They may "double the size of the facility and their staff within the next 12 months," according to Fedeli. "Their long-term goal is to build a general aviation or trainer aircraft."

Not bad for a company whose initial deal with ABPC two years ago was a victim of a dispute between the corporation and the federal government over the condition of the hangars and the money promised to help them, he adds.

Instead of the $15 million promised, Fedeli states, "we received $4.75 million and we had to push them into court to receive another $2.6 million."

"As a punitive action the federal government placed a legal caution on the property" preventing Lemex from buying land to build a hangar.

The company backed away from the deal and decided to expand in Montreal, but neither they nor ABPC lost sight of the opportunity. Last October ABPC and the government settled their dispute through arbitration and a deal quickly followed. By the end of 2001, with Lemex established and the remaining property sold, "there could be as many as 400 or 500 people working there," he says. That would effectively replace the jobs lost when the base downsized. North Bay's own Voyageur Airways moved into its hangar the same day ABPC moved onto the site in January 1996 and became what Fedeli respectfully calls the centre's anchor client, in part for the company's role in attracting other businesses.

The hangar became a maintenance, repair and overhaul facility for Voyageur which also operates a worldwide charter aircraft service and the air ambulance services in Ontario and New Brunswick. It employs about 220 workers.

"They've been constantly hiring every month since they moved," Fedeli says. "I suspect they'll have about 300 employees" by the end of the year."

Bombardier Aerospace, which assembles Canadair CL-415 waterbombers, moved into the centre in 1998 following a competition that included other Northern Ontario centres.

"North Bay developed a superior business model for them here," Fedeli says. "We show them how they would operate most efficiently here." That included the ABPC adding a fuel farm and installing an overhead frame to make assembly of the CL-415 waterbomber easier.

Bombardier, was originally to employ 50 workers, but a delivery centre to do the final detailing work before delivery was added, creating another 80 jobs.