Inland Audio-Visual Co., a 59-year-old Spokane business, has ceased operating and has filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. A portion of that enterprise, though, now is doing business here as a sole proprietorship.


The company, located at 27 W. Indiana, filed for protection from creditors last month, listing total assets of about $143,700 and liabilities of some $134,000, according to Bankruptcy Court documents.


Owner Larry Ellingson says the company shut down at the end of March. He blames the closure on losses the company suffered in the sales and installation of audio-visual equipment for commercial, institutional, medical, and military clients.


We were continually finding that it took longer to complete jobs than we had budgeted for, and that finally reared up and bit us, he says.


Through the sole proprietorship, called Larry Ellingson, dba Inland Audio Visual, he says he is continuing to offer services in two other main areas-equipment rental and staging, and audio-visual production.


The latter includes services such as transferring home movies onto videocassette tapes and DVDs, turning PowerPoint presentations into video, recording music albums onto compact discs, and creating PowerPoint presentations and audio soundtracks, he says.


The operation employs Ellingson and two others. He says it will remain in the same 9,500-square-foot building on Indiana, which he owns, but it has shrunk its space there to about 2,000 square feet at the back of the building, and he is seeking a tenant for the rest of the space there.


Inland Audio-Visual was founded here in 1946, and Ellingson+s father, John, bought it in 1953.


Ellingson took over the business in 1986.


He says its peak employment was in 1983, when it employed 23 people.