Demographics determines location of 50-acre center

A 50-acre retail center,North Carson Crossing Shopping Center at College Parkway and Hot Springs Road,will rise west of I-580 the Highway 395 bypass, anchored by Wal- Mart which occupies 22 acres of the site, says developer Kent Witt, managing partner ofWitt Properties Inc.Witt handles site planning and leasing; partner George Karadanis handles construction.

Their company,North Carson Crossing LLC, bought the property from Roger Shaheen in July.

The Shaheen Business Park, being developed by Dan Shaheen of Parkway Commercial Properties, is located west of the Highway 395 bypass.

Tenants at North Carson Crossing will be similar to those at South Towne Crossing in Reno, says Witt.

"Wal-Mart is a major anchor tenant," he says."I have letters of intent from some of those same retailers in the Douglas County south county area."

Construction will start this year,with the first tenants expected to move in by spring 2007 says Witt.

Final tenants are expected by late 2007 or early 2008.

Witt chose the location by the numbers.

"I'm excited about the demographics," he says, "They're excellent."

He cites research done at the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Reno: Within a two-mile radius of the intersection of Highway 395 and Jacks Valley Road there is a daytime population of 2,000 workers.

Within a two-mile radius of the intersection of the Highway 395 bypass and College Parkway, by comparison, there are 20,000 daytime workers, and the new Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center will add 2,000 more daytime employees to the head count.

"That's over 10 times the daytime population of south county,"Witt says."The nighttime resident population base is 30,000 people."

"There's a big demand for retail services there," says Witt, because "the retail serving Carson City happened in Douglas County, just over the line, because Douglas County made the utilities so inexpensive.

But to get there, people must go through a lot of congestion and traffic."

Witt developed two major retail centers in south Reno.At Firecreek Crossing, the area across from the Reno convention center,"we bought the land, but then a developer from southern California developed the stores," says Witt."At South Towne Crossing we did the whole thing."