Merit builds expanded facility

A new facility being built for Merit Electric on Geiger Grade is expected to help make day-to-day operations smoother for the five-year old company, President Rod Soule says.

Merit, which specializes in large-scale commercial and industrial work, occupies a 6,000-square-foot building with a crowded 15,000-square-foot yard on Edison Way. The company's new facility on Geiger Grade at 1675 State Route 431 encompasses 12,000 square feet of building space on one acre.

"We have just grown out of this facility, primarily our warehouse and yard space," Soule says. "It will make us more efficient as far as the yard, deliveries and equipment. We just need the space."

Soule says Merit performs a great deal of site work, and it lacked adequate space to store trucks and other heavy equipment at the Edison Way facility. Merit also houses large items with long lead times, such as street lamps.

Cost was one of the main reasons the company chose the Geiger Grade location.

"It was very difficult to find a parcel in town where you can have a yard," Soule says. "If there are parcels that are big enough, they have got so many covenants and restrictions around them that it just makes the cost of the facility exorbitant.

"We looked at a couple of places closer to town, but by the time you did all the required landscaping or put up eight-foot block walls around your yard, it became pretty expensive."

Merit's new building is a pre-fab metal structure with interior design by Reno architect Al Salzano. Cost for the expansion is more than $800,000. Merit, founded in 2003, employs 45 and expects to move operations to the new facility being erected by Mike Clark Construction in October.