PENDLETON – As Keystone RV Co. employees prepare the interior of their new 77,000-square-foot production building, the plant’s general manager is talking about asking the city to build another one.

“The next one will be just exactly like it,” Bill Burns told members of the Pendleton City Council, Planning Commission and city staff during a tour Tuesday. Neither Burns nor city officials indicated when that request might come, however.

The city borrowed money from Community Bank to build the 77,000- square-foot structure on 10 acres the city purchased from the Port of Umatilla. The property is east of Keystone’s trailer manufacturing plant at 3000 Westgate. The city will repay the loan with Keystone’s $21,500-per-month lease payments.

Rick Vogel, the city’s project supervisor, praised Mike Becker General Contractor Inc. of La Grande for completing the building on schedule. Becker was low bidder for the project at $2,333,338, which was about 85 percent of the city’s estimate.

“No city taxpayer money went into this project,” added City Manager Larry Lehman.

Burns said Pendleton’s Keystone plant produces 27 travel trailers and fifth-wheel trailers daily. The plant employs 350. When production begins in the new building, projected for Nov. 22, he said workers will begin producing Keystone’s Sprinter line of RVs for customers in 14 Western states.

“It’s going to be a great asset to have this building up and running,” Burns said, adding that Keystone has 14 similar plants in Indiana.

As Burns led a tour of the building, Keystone workers erected catwalks and built an elevator on the floor between two mezzanines, where workers will prepare parts, such as air conditioners and skylights, for installation on the upper sections of the RVs being assembled. When the structures between the mezzanines are completed, they will allow employees to work at various heights on the RVs as the vehicles move through the plant.

Keystone expects to employ 65 to 70 workers in the new plant to begin with, and hopes to increase employment there to between 100 and 150 by this time next year, Burns said.

Production of the Sprinter line should begin at about five units per day, he said, escalating to about 20 per day within the next year. That would bring Keystone’s total production in Pendleton to near 50 units per day by the end of 2005, he predicted. Keystone builds RVs ranging from 19 to 32 feet long. They sell for $11,000 to $29,000 each, depending upon size and accouterments.

The company has a “24-hour rule,” he explained, noting that customers must have financing and remove RVs they’ve purchased within 24 hours after the units leave the assembly line.

“We don’t make one penny when they’re sitting in this yard,” he said, adding that no more than 50 or 60 finished units should be parked on the property at any time.