Reno Land Inc.'s purchase of the long empty Park Lane Mall site closed escrow last month. The site can be seen in this aerial photo looking west with the intersection of Plumb Lane and South Virginia Street seen in the upper right of the photo.
The Park Lane Mall property is officially under new ownership.
Reno Land Inc. announced that they closed escrow on the 45.6-acre property located at South Virginia Street and Plumb Lane Thursday, Sept. 22.
“It is a great relief,” Chip Bowlby, managing partner with Reno Land Inc., said about closing escrow in a recent phone interview with NNBW. “Then I went out there and realized I had just purchased 46-acres of asphalt.”
The blighted property has sat vacant since 2009 when the last buildings from the Park Lane Mall were razed. Bowlby plans to redevelop the property into a new mixed-use development that will include 1,200 residential units, 100,000 square feet of retail and 70,000 to 80,000 square feet of office and professional space.
“This project will be a great bookend to the Midtown district,” Bowlby said.
The residential units will be built first and will be comprised of three different multifamily complexes that will make up the 1,200 residential units. One will be a three story urban-garden style complex and other two will be urban-wrap developments, which are very high density housing with approximately 85 units to the acre.
He described it as a place for Millennials, who he believes will be the target demographic, to be able to live, work and play.
“Instead of seagulls there will be Millennials,” he said with a laugh.
Bowlby plans to start putting in the major backbone infrastructure in the end of the first quarter of 2017 and to start building in the second quarter of 2017. He anticipates that residents will be able to start moving into units by the end of 2017.
According to a recent press release, Reno Land Inc. is also planning to make the new development a green project by using environmentally sensitive products and building techniques.
He estimates that the redevelopment will take five to 10 years to totally build out the development.
“I am as excited as I am nervous,” Bowlby said about the project.
He plans to present a more detailed redevelopment plan at the Wednesday, Oct. 12 Reno City Council meeting.
Bowbly purchased the property from Merlone Geier Partners, a Bay Area real estate company. The company, then known as M&H Realty partners, purchased the property in 2006. However, their plans to redevelop the property withered in the recession and it has become a weed filled lot since it was razed. Bowlby did not disclose the price of the sale.
According to Bowlby, they have chosen MVE + Partners, Inc., an architecture and planning firm based in Irvine, Calif., to be the architect on the project. The firm was chosen out of seven firms out of which the top three firms competed to be selected for the project.
Bowlby is also currently working on several other projects in northern Nevada including the 141-acre master-planned Rancharrah project, the Summit Club multi-family project in South Reno, the Meridian 120 project near Boomtown, as well as projects in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center and Fernley.
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