Owners of TRIC planning huge new industrial park

The owners of the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center are in the process of buying up to 20,000 acres of land in Lyon County to create a new industrial center to succeed TRIC.

“We’ve pretty well wrapped up (TRIC),” said Lance Gilman, who owns the existing center east of Reno along with Roger Norman. “We legitimately have about 300-400 acres left.”

He added that some of that property is in escrow at this time so, he said, “we’re embarking on our next project.”

“We’ve been looking for a special opportunity and we’ve identified one,” he said.

That opportunity consists of upward of 20,000 acres of undeveloped land along both sides of U.S. 95A stretching south from the Fernley town limits.

That area, he said, is in what he and Norman see as “the path of growth,” in western Nevada.

“There is still a very strong demand for manufacturing, distribution and especially fulfillment centers,” he said. He said much of that demand is for parcels a lot larger than anything left at TRIC.

Gilman has also talked recently about the need for residential development in that area to feed the growing needs of the workforce at TRIC and, now, their new plan.

“Both sides of the highway are developable. There’s lots of infrastructure with the highway accessing what we need.”

“The really interesting news there is a lot of property we’re looking at shares a boundary line with Tahoe Reno,” he said. “It’s conceivable we would be able to tie the two projects together with infrastructure. That’s not out of the question at all.”

Gilman said it’s a lot of work and a challenging project but he emphasized that it’s moving forward.

“We’re now in escrow and will close absolutely on the first 7,000 acres,” he said. “This gives us a footprint and something to work for in the short term.”

TRIC was a ranch with a single owner when they bought it a couple of decades ago.

“Candidly, this is an assemblage,” he said. That means they are negotiating with multiple owners.

“If we can bring all this together, really, it’s going to represent a milestone step ahead of where we are,” he said. “It’s real preliminary right now, just out of the starting gate.”