Machabee plans facility in Reno

Machabee Business Equipment will combine its technology and furniture sales forces at a single location when it moves to a 36,000-square-foot distribution center on Valley Road in Reno.

Design is by Gordon Aloiau Architecture of Reno. A contractor has not yet been selected. Machabee employs 75.

The company recently passed leadership to the third generation when Scott Machabee this year took over as president from Gary Machabee, who now refers to his role as "proconsul."

Only 12 percent of family owned companies survive into the third generation, he says.

The company has changed with the times, says its president. Throughout the 1960s and '70s it sold office supplies and the business machines of the era such as calculators and typewriters.

But in the 1980s, when big box office supply stores came on the scene, it dropped the supply line to focus on office furniture and the computers and peripherals. Further advances in the 1990s brought document imaging and color process on the scene.