The company hopes to have a second hangar — a 90,000-square-foot facility, with an additional 11,000 square feet of administrative space — finished by the second quarter of 2024. It will be located near the company’s first hangar at the airport.
The first hangar was the first privately owned major maintenance, repair and overhaul facility for aircraft in the Dayton area since the days of Orville Wright, Hauboldt said.
The company does a lot of work for the Air Force, the Department of Defense, the Navy, Army and other federal customers, with some commercial work, as well, said Hauboldt, who is a former Air Force Life Cycle Management Center vice commander.
Sierra Nevada is one of the largest private aerospace and defense companies in the United States.
Modifying and updating large military aircraft is an increasingly crucial job for the United States, Fatih Ozmen, the Sierra Nevada chief executive and co-owner, said in 2022 when the company first announced its plans in Dayton.
In fact, given the presence nearby of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — the base responsible for cradle-to-grave management of so many Air Force planes and weapons systems — Ozmen recalled his surprise that a large privately run maintenance operation was not already operating in Dayton.
“This is the right place to go the next step,” Ozmen said last year.
It took the right company making the move at the right time, Hauboldt said. While much of the nation’s aerospace and defense market is merging and pulling back, Sierra Nevada is growing, he said.
“That was part of our decision to not only build a new hangar but to come to the Miami Valley,” he said.
With the first hangar, officially opened in February 2023, the two hangars will have a combined 150 employees in Dayton and Beavercreek.
While Hauboldt said it was too soon to offer details, he said the company does have plans to continue to grow in Dayton. “We have some very promising opportunities in 2024 and 2025 to bring a lot more work to Dayton. It’s a little early to talk about what those might be, and who we would be supporting, but yes, we have site plans and agreements with the city of Dayton ... to continue our growth with more hangars.”
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