Structure, a nearly year-old company that plans to design, assemble and market a new system for utilities and businesses to remotely monitor their operations, is buying a building in downtown Wrangell and could start putting together and delivering its equipment next year.

The company, established by a trio of Juneau friends and their business partners, has hung its sign on the back side of the former Ottesen’s warehouse on Front Street.

The partners had been talking with borough officials about building an assembly shop at the 6-Mile Mill site but opted to take over an existing building, said Jake Haas, one of the founders.

“This is a much faster way … to get a presence in Wrangell,” Haas said in an interview last week. Building from scratch at 6-Mile could have taken a couple of years, he added.

The floor plan is mostly open, with offices on a smaller mezzanine level, which will work well for Structure’s assembly operation to put together its controllers, called a “comms vault,” or communications vault, he said.

The building will need some interior remodeling.

The company is in the business of designing and building a new SCADA system (supervisory control and data acquisition). Older systems have been used since the 1970s to monitor sewage pumps and water lines, including Wrangell’s own utilities, and multiple other production operations.

Sensors on pipelines, power lines, pumps and other components transmit data back to a controller unit, allowing workers to remotely monitor operations.

Structure sees a strong market for its new system, particularly in rural Alaska communities with critical infrastructure spread out, requiring a dependable monitoring system using radio signals, fiber-optic lines, phone lines or wireless signals.

“A lot of old systems, the front door is open,” Haas said of cybersecurity. Every pathway into the comms vault will be encrypted, he said of their system.

The Wrangell plant will assemble routers, switches, radio gear and circuit boards into the comms vault, a box the size of a stereo speaker, Haas said.

Off-the-shelf components will be shipped into town for installation in the box, along with some custom-made pieces.

Structure’s software development is being handled separate from its plans for Wrangell.

Kyle Farley-Robinson, another one of the three founding partners, said a rough estimate would be assembling the first units in the building sometime next year.

The business development timeline depends on funding, Haas said.

Though finances will affect the start-up date, “we’re 100% in, there’s no backing out,” Blake Rider, one of the founders, said in an interview last week.

Structure wants to “bring jobs back to Alaska and keep jobs here,” Rider, who holds an electrical engineering degree, said during a company presentation to the borough assembly in April.

The initial number of jobs would depend on the number of orders to build the units, Farley-Robinson said last week, but could range from half a dozen to 20 workers on the assembly and testing crews.

The job count could grow as the company expands into building more of its own components.

“Our goal is to hire local first,” and provide training, Haas said.

The team members said they selected Wrangell for its affordable electricity rates, a supportive community and to keep the jobs in Southeast. Structure will also have operations or contractors in Juneau and Sitka.

Structure’s business plan is to design and promote its remote-monitoring systems as easier to use and less expensive than what’s currently available, emphasizing the training of local operators so that rural communities can avoid the high cost and delay of bringing in technicians from out of town to fix problems.

Structure did not disclose a purchase price for the Ottesen’s building. The building sits on two lots, totaling about 9,200 square feet. The building and land are assessed by the borough at a combined $630,000.