Spokane-area entrepreneur Bernard Daines is considering whether to expand substantially the size of a planned addition to the Liberty Lake Internet Portal building, in Liberty Lake.


In June, Daines disclosed plans to build a two-story, 45,000-square-foot addition to the west of the Portal building, located at 23403 E. Mission.


Now, Daines says hes looking into constructing a three-story, 72,000-square-foot expansion there instead.


Were working with consultants and are having an economic assessment done, Daines says. Some people say were not taking advantage of the full potential there with the initial expansion plan.


Daines says itd cost about $9.25 million to go forward with the larger expansion, about $2.5 million more than the smaller project would cost. He hopes to decide whether to move ahead with the larger addition by the end of this year.


The company will proceed with the initial expansion plan if the larger addition isnt feasible, he says.


In addition to providing more floor space, the larger expansion would include a surface parking lot and a below-grade parking deck at the west end of the new addition.


The Portal building is two stories tall with a basement and has a total of 33,000 square feet of floor space.


Currently, it is fully leased out, says Greg Zemp, the building manager and part-owner of the Daines-controlled Liberty Lake Internet Exchange LLC, which is located in the building and provides high-speed Internet access, Web hosting, server co-location, and other high-tech services to businesses.


In addition to Liberty Lake Internet Exchange, tenants in the building include other high-tech companies, such as data backup and recovery company IT-Lifeline Inc. and computer-network developer SafeDesk Solutions, and other types of businesses, ranging from dentist Ross Simonds to the Liberty Lake office of Acceptance Capital Mortgage Corp.


Daines bought two buildings earlier this year just west of the Portal building from Robotic Process Systems Inc., which moved to the Spokane Business & Industrial Park, and plans to raze those structures to make way for the expansion.


For now, hes using the buildings sparingly for a variety of purposesfor example, a high-tech seminar was held in one of them earlier this month.


Daines and his wife, Marsha, bought the Portal building in 2000 and expanded it to its current size the following year, installing technology infrastructure to support high-end users of broadband connectivity.


Daines operated Webiness Inc., a web-design and hosting company, in that building initially.


Daines, Zemp, and others started Liberty Lake Internet Exchange in the building in 2003 and began marketing the structure as a regional Internet center at that time.


Webiness operations eventually were folded into Liberty Lake Internet Exchange.


A 30-year veteran of the networking industry, Daines moved Packet Engines Inc., a gigabit-Ethernet equipment maker, to Spokane from the Silicon Valley in 1995.


He and his fellow owners sold that company to Paris-based Alcatel SA for $315 million in 1998.


In 1999, he founded World Wide Packets, which makes devices for fiber-optic communications, but left that companys top post in 2001.