Brightpoint's move will take one-of-a-kind building off market

J. Michael Hoeck plops down a stack of files that stands taller than a coffee mug and breathes a deep sigh of relief.

Hoeck, part of the industrial real estate team at NAI Alliance in Reno, just closed the $11.5 million sale of the former Pfizer Inc. distribution center in South Meadows to Brightpoint North America Inc.

The transaction is significant on several scores:

The return of Brightpoint, a third-party logistics provider for companies in the wireless communications and data industry, to northern Nevada creates 79 jobs.

The company's decision will generate a first-year economic impact of $9.58 million in the region, estimates the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada.

The purchase of the 263,924-square-foot distribution center at 1025 Sandhill Road is the largest industrial transaction in the Reno-Sparks industrial market in the last two years.

And, for the NAI Alliance industrial team, the sale creates a new user for a highly specialized distribution center that had proven to be particularly challenging to sell.

Dave Simonsen of NAI Alliance notes the building is completely air-conditioned, even its warehouse.

While that makes sense in a building that served as a distribution point for pharmaceuticals, it's exceptionally rare in warehouse properties. And few distribution users want to pay to cool warehouse space.

Then, too, the building's interior allowed racking to extend 40 feet above the floor, far higher than the 30- or 32-foot clear heights common in even the newest distribution centers in the region.

The racking and conveyor systems in the building alone were valued at some $7 million, Hoeck says.

Hired by Pfizer in mid-2008 to find a buyer for the building, the NAI Alliance team that included Paul Perkins and Dan Oster in addition to Hoeck and Simonsen began looking without luck for another pharmaceutical company to move into the space.

In weekly conference calls, Pfizer executives and NAI Alliance brokers worked through the darkest days of the recession to identify potential purchasers.

Enter Brightpoint.

The company had first come to Reno in 1999, but closed its northern Nevada distribution center in 2008.

As Brightpoint, which is headquartered at Indianapolis, began planning an expansion that included hopes for more geographically diverse operations, it once again took at look at Reno as well as locations in Utah.

Along with the Nevada's tax-friendly environment and its economic incentives for new employers, the Reno location won out because of the availability of affordable real estate, said Chris Scott, vice president of strategic implementation for Brightpoint.

When executives of Brightpoint and the real estate brokerage they'd hired, Jones Lang La Salle, began looking at locations in the Reno area, they had their eye on properties larger than the Pfizer facility.

"It was a shot in the dark," Simonesen says of NAI's decision to show the Pfizer building to the Brightpoint shoppers.

Brightpoint decided that the Pfizer building had possibilities, but weeks of long-distance negotiation sometimes three conference calls a week followed.

One sticking point: Although Pfizer had vacated most of the building, it still was operating a distribution center for animal-health products in part of the space. Before Brightpoint could complete its move, Pfizer needed to find new space for the animal-health unit.

"There were a lot of moving parts," says Simonsen says. Pfizer now is moving the animal-health operations to another building in South Meadows.

At the same time, Brightpoint was working with EDAWN, the state Commission on Economic Development, the City of Reno, Washoe County and the Washoe County School District on its application for incentives from the state government. The incentives were approved in November.

Brightpoint has begun hiring distribution and assembly workers and managers for the new facility, which it expects to be fully operational this spring. It told state development officials that wages will average $16.16 an hour. (For jobs information, see http://brightpoint.submit4jobs.com.)

Some of the operations in the Reno center will be transferred from Brightpoint facilities in Plainfield, Ind.

"It's a great for story for Reno that Brightpoint came back," Simonsen says.