With its move from Annandale recently completed, Airlift Doors, Inc. is settling into new digs in Maple Lake and planning to make the most of a work space that’s nearly tripled in size.

“Originally, we thought this building was larger than we needed,” said Josh Hart, who shares ownership of the company with his mother, Carleen Hart, and sister, Sarah Hart. “But then when we actually toured it, we saw that it fit our needs.”

Airlift Doors, a leader in the commercial door business for more than 25 years, has been manufacturing air-powered door openers since 1979, and polycarbonate doors since 1991. The company specializes in car care applications such as car washes, service bays, dealerships, oil change bays, salt storage sheds and vehicle showrooms, with a strong distributor network set up across the United States and a limited number of overseas connections, as well.

The company purchased the former Warrior Boats’ building, located on Highway 55, in October.

“Fall is our busy season,” Hart said, “so we put the move off and gradually started moving in a continuous process that lasted from October to last week, when we moved our last truckload. In the meantime, we operated out of two locations. It’s so nice now to be able to manufacture, pack and ship from one place.”

Hart is the proprietor of a family business that his father, Jim, started by manufacturing air-power doors out of his home garage in 1979.

“Dad passed away last month,” Hart said. “He was the founder, the guy who developed the company. He built it to what it is today. Due to health issues, he was not able to be as involved over the past few years. But he was well-known in the community, not just for business, but for his personality.”

The company still has a corporate office in

Minneapolis, and will use its Maple Lake site for manufacturing and shipping, with plans to eventually consolidate all operations to the Maple Lake location.

Plans for the new facility include utilizing the larger area for research and development of new products.

“That was a part of our need for space,” Hart said. “Our goal is to have four or five projects going at once, while also developing new products in-house.

Hopefully, we can put up a door and just run it constantly for a year, see how it does. We’re going to have 10 to 15 garage doors

-continued on page 16