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An empty industrial warehouse in Fernley could become ground zero for business development and workforce training in Northern Nevada.
Mark IV Capital, developer of the expansive Victory Logistics District, recently announced it was dedicating 40,000 square feet of space inside one of its speculative warehouses to create a Center of Excellence in the hopes of attracting new business development efforts to the region. Additionally, Mark IV Capital has set aside almost 59 acres of ground at Victory Logistics District to create a campus for additional Centers of Excellence.
Rick Nelson, senior vice president of Northern Nevada for Mark IV Capital, said his company has been working for months behind the scenes to attract funding, private employers and academic institutions to VLD’s Center of Excellence.
“We have a location that has buildings and infrastructure, and we have a company that is willing to support a Center of Excellent effort here at Victory Logistics District,” said Nelson during a presentation of the concept at the CoE location at 1740 Nevada Pacific Parkway. “We are working with various academic institutions – UNR, UNLV, Western Nevada College, and a couple of weeks ago we had Arizona State and Utah State out here as well – to try and bring in different hubs of technology.”
The Center of Excellence could be a hub for workforce development as well. About half the 40,000-square-foot space will be dedicated to wet and dry labs, with the other half reserved as classrooms that are a natural fit to host workforce development programs for nearby employers or as a university extension site. The classrooms will be broken into small, medium and large sizes and would be available for regional employers to conduct a variety of workforce training and instruction programs before new employees begin working on factory or warehouse floors, or to upskill existing employees.
“We are in talks with a number of the corporations around here to do workforce development to train their employees,” Nelson said. “When this comes online, there also will be opportunities for UNR, Western Nevada and other colleges to do basic classes and workforce development. We’ve given them a location to do that.”
Rick NelsonNelson also said that Mark IV Capital has been in discussions with the Governor’s Office on Economic Development, as well as Northern Nevada Development Authority, to try to secure funding from the state and from academic institutions to build out the workforce development center. The goal, he said, is to get the wheels turning by January and have classes begin in June.
“Nothing happens overnight,” he said. “We have been trying to get a lot of different entities to agree on the same pathway, and that takes a lot of effort. We have been stirring this pot since June, and we have our first company coming in this January.”
Nelson said an aerospace company has signed a letter of intent to be the first firm to utilize the Center of Excellence at Victory Logistics District.
In addition to being a place for UNR and other colleges to host classes, the Center of Excellence will serve as space for bootstrapped startups to incubate and prove out their ideas and concepts. As those companies grow, Nelson noted, they could easily assimilate into user-ready industrial space at Victory Logistics District.
“A lot of startups don’t have the funding to have a space to work,” Nelson said. “We are going to offer that basic infrastructure, as well as an administrator to run the facility. If they need the space for six months or a year, and then move on to the next level, we have a place for them.”
The Center of Excellence would also be a great place to train the region’s growing data center workforce, Nelson added. Mark IV Capital is creating development-ready data center space at VLD in anticipation of the needs of hyperscalers expanding their capabilities in Northern Nevada.
The much larger Centers of Excellence campus, meanwhile, would be established on 58.8 acres of raw ground fronting Interstate 80. Development of those additional facilities would require a mix of private funds and academic and federal grants, Nelson said.
Mark IV Capital is extending utilities to the site and the work should be completed within six to 12 months, he noted.
“It’s in progress right now,” Nelson said. “We have a lot of ongoing efforts here at the same time. The ground is under plow, and we are working with various agencies to make it all come together.”