Loveland-based Scion Aviation opening assembly facility in Cheyenne

LOVELAND – Scion Aviation LLC, which is rapidly outgrowing its Loveland facility, will this fall move its final assembly, painting and delivery operations to a 43,000-square-foot building at the Cheyenne Regional Airport in Wyoming.

Scion’s chief executive, Jim Sampson, said Monday that he plans to have the new facility up and running by the end of the first quarter of 2017. He said the Cheyenne facility will initially employ 10 to 20 people, but should grow to 30 employees in the coming years.

Scion — a contract manufacturer of parts and airframes for companies that make both unmanned and full-scale aircraft — currently operates out of a 23,000-square-foot building at 3693 County Road 30 in Loveland and employs 20 people. The company plans to keep its research and development and tooling operations at its current site. But the company also is also seeking a location where it can build a 50,000-square-foot clean room — with room to grow to 400,000 square feet or more — that would be used as the main production facility for the carbon-fiber parts.

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“Moving final assembly out buys a lot of room short-term, but it won’t be an adequate solution long-term,” Sampson said, noting multiple contracts the company has in negotiations that are expected to fuel Scion’s upcoming rapid growth. Scion is currently working at a production rate of two airframes per month, but Sampson said that the plan is to be up to six per month by the end of the first quarter next year.

Sampson said he’s still negotiating potential incentives with the city of Cheyenne. But he said the main draw to the facility there was the fact that it was remodeled about 10 years ago and is already set up with two large paint booths. Lower lease rates than what he could land on the Front Range in Northern Colorado were also a draw.

“Expedience makes that a very nice option,” Sampson said. “The building’s basically ready to go, so we just have to move our people in.”

Scion’s current 35-acre site could potentially accommodate the main production facility Sampson wants to build. But he’s feuded with the city of Loveland in recent years over an annexation agreement signed in 2005 that would require Scion to install a left-turn lane into the property off of County Road 30 if future expansion increases the amount of traffic entering and exiting.

Sampson said he’s had brief talks with the city about the agreement recently, but “nothing in great detail.” While Scion’s current property remains a possibility for the main production facility — as does the Northern Colorado Regional Airport next door — Sampson has said he’s exploring sites and incentives available in other municipalities in northern Colorado.

Wherever the main production facility goes, the company’s headquarters is likely to go, too. Sampson said he expects that the new facility would employ 50 or more people initially and could grow to more than 200 over the first 10 years in operation based on some of the contracts the company is negotiating now.