Windham Weaponry’s owner is building an indoor shooting range and a retail store on his property in North Windham.

Windham Weaponry owner Dick Dyke and a group of shareholders affiliated with the North Windham-based gun manufacturer plan to open an indoor shooting range and retail store this fall in a 15,000-square-foot warehouse located next to the company’s headquarters at 999 Roosevelt Trail.

The 12-lane, 25-yard shooting range is being built to accommodate rifles and handguns of up to .50-caliber, according to project manager Allen Faraday, who is also the executive vice president of Windham Weaponry. Construction started June 1, and the range is set to open in late October.

According to Faraday, the range will be the biggest in southern Maine.

“Being in the firearms business, we realized that there is a real need in southern Maine here for a good place to go for people who are shooting recreationally or for competition and needing good training,” Faraday said. “There’s a couple of small shooting ranges in southern Maine but any larger ranges would be in New Hampshire or outside of Bangor.”

A new company called the Windham Indoor Shooting Range and Retail Store will operate the facility. Peter Joyce, a retired Portland police officer who was the co-founder of the Portland Police Department’s Special Reaction Team, has been hired as general manager. According to Faraday, the new business will employ between 10 and 12 full-time and part-time workers.

The facility will operate seven days a week, year round from approximately 10 a.m.-7 p.m., Faraday said. While 6,000 square feet of the warehouse will be dedicated to the shooting range, another 3,000 square feet will serve as a retail store, featuring a full line of hunting and shooting firearms, supplies, ammo and accessories. The store will also feature repair services and antique firearms purchases and sales. While the store will sell some Windham Weaponry AR rifles, the bulk of the firearms on sale will be made by other companies, Faraday said. An existing conference center in the warehouse that is sometimes used by the Sebago Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce will remain in place.

The range will also offer a wide range of training courses. Instructors will offer firearm safety classes for young people, and law enforcement training programs including side arm, long gun and shotgun training classes.

“The indoor shooting range will not only be a year-round destination for local residents and visitors to use for shooting their own or our rental firearms, but ‘the’ place to go for instruction such as concealed-carry classes, basic handgun or rifle instruction, advanced firearms proficiency, tactical training, instruction on how to maintain your firearm, women’s only classes, and much more, all taught by our highly qualified, life experienced, ‘best in class,’ NRA-certified team of instructors,” according to a press release.

The range will feature a heavy-duty steel bullet trap – or Total Containment Trap – that employs a series of funnel plates to guide bullets into a deceleration chamber. A viewing area is being constructed behind the range where spectators can watch behind large ballistic windows. Customers will be asked to fill out a questionnaire before using the range in order to gauge their level of experience and the amount of supervision required, Faraday said.

Faraday said the range will be used “to a limited degree” for testing rifles manufactured at Windham Weaponry. The business has primarily been testing its rifles in Gorham since it opened in 2011.

In 2010, Bushmaster Firearms, Windham Weaponry’s predecessor, drew ire from nearby Windham property owners after it tested 10,000 firearms on the Grondin Gravel pit off Enterprise Drive for a purchase from an “overseas foreign government,” as reported by the company at the time.

According to Faraday, Windham Weaponry has not used the Grondin pit for rifle testing. The noise from the new indoor shooting range will be negligible, he said.

“With the way it’s designed and constructed with the concrete-filled block walls, the additional insulation and sound board, the sound outside the building should be very minimal,” he said.

Faraday said he hopes that local law enforcement agencies make use of the shooting range. Last winter, residents of Standish’s Richville neighborhood complained about the use of a large gravel pit as an informal shooting range for law enforcement and, in particular, recreational firearms users. The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office has used the pit as a SWAT-team training site for years.

Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce could not be reached for comment about whether the sheriff’s office would use the new Windham indoor range. Windham Police Chief Kevin Schofield said he was aware of the forthcoming facility but did not know yet whether Windham police would use it for training. The department trains in Scarborough, Schofield said.

“We really haven’t talked to anyone at Windham Weaponry about it,” he said. “We do have a meeting set up in the near future to go up and tour the facility.”

Tom Bartell, Windham’s economic development director, said he recalls visiting an indoor shooting range in Saco with members of the Town Council in 2010. They were considering whether an indoor shooting range could resolve the conflict caused by Bushmaster’s weapons testing in the Grondin pit.

“At the time they were talking about having an indoor range associated with the state and county,” Bartell said. “It’s interesting that this came along.”

Windham Weaponry Executive Vice President Allen Faraday is the project manager of a new shooting range and retail store in North Windham. The facility, which will open in a 15,000-square-foot warehouse this fall, is expected to operate year round. Staff photo by Ezra Silk