Major distribution center completed, now awaits users

A Chicago-area development company and its financial partner have completed a major industrial building at Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.

Now they need to find a tenant or maybe several tenants to occupy the 566,875-square-foot building.

The McShane Companies of Rosemont, Ill, and MetLife Real Estate Investments developed the big-box industrial project known as Eagle Valley Industrial Center. It's one of the first projects in the second phase of Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.

It was launched as a speculative project about a year ago and marks the first foray into the northern

Nevada market by McShane. Its construction arm was the general contractor on the building.

The CB Richard Ellis office in Reno is handling leasing or possible sale of the building. Gordon Zack of the firm said several prospective tenants have taken a look at leasing all or parts of the building. It can be divided into spaces as small as 125,000 square feet.

Once leases are signed for space in the building, McShane has plans for an identical second building just to the west of the first project. McShane purchased 52.5 acres at the industrial center.

The Eagle Valley Industrial Center is designed to handle high-volume distribution in which arriving merchandise quickly is redirected to outgoing trucks for transportation to retailers.

A key feature, Zack said, are "speed bays" 60 feet deep just inside the 148 loading dock doors. Those bays are created to allow merchandise to be handled without requiring storage in warehouse racks.

The building provides 32-foot heights for warehouse racks, and its floor of 7-inch concrete is designed to be exceptionally flat to allow use of high-reaching forklifts.

Lighting fixtures in the ceiling are on 16-foot "whips" long stretches of wire, which allow light figures to be moved easily to fit the way that a tenant installs warehouse racks.

The interior of the building is painted white most distribution centers interiors aren't painted at all to improve reflection of light.

Spaces for office uses are included in each of the building's four corners.

The property includes space for parking 104 truck trailers.

McShane first began looking at Tahoe Reno Industrial Center when it was in competition to build a distribution center for PetSmart. It lost out, but liked what it saw in the ability of northern Nevada to provide distribution to the West Coast.

"We think TRIC is a great location," said John Dobrott, a McShane vice president who oversees its West Coast operations from Newport Beach, Calif.