A local software company is working to turn 40 acres of Carson City land into a fully-wired, high tech industrial and office park.
InterPlex International, based in Carson City, develops and sells software to help businesses manage and monitor arrays of old and new computer systems.
The company also owns about 40 acres of undeveloped land on the edge of Carson City, near Mound House, that happens to sit right on an underground fiber optic cable network that rings Highway 50 between Reno, Fernley and the state capital, according to Richard Kelsey, InterPlex chief executive officer and senior managing partner.
Over the next two years, Kelsey and his partner James Parker, who owns the land, hope to build between 200,000 and 300,000 square feet of state-of-the-art space for office and light industrial use and lease it for about half the price of similar space found in Reno's South Meadows.
On top of that, InterPlex plans to provide tenants various computer services, including network management and data backup.
But first things first.
First, InterPlex has to figure out water service.
Development of the land has been restricted in the past because it uses well water.
Kelsey said the land was recently surveyed and he thinks a water tank will be built near there as a part of larger project in which Carson City is providing water to Mound House.
"An utility extension is needed, but we haven't analyzed that yet," said Charles Long, an economic development consultant who has worked with Carson City for the last two years.
InterPlex's plans fit in with Carson City's efforts to attract new business to the area.
"It's an exciting prospect and has a lot of potential," said Long.
"But it's premature at this point to know what the city can do to support it."
InterPlex is now working with architects who are developing ideas for new buildings as well as remodeling existing airplane hangars that house offices on the property now.
Kelsey said he is also talking to a real estate developer in Los Angeles who owns 200 buildings in southern California and is interested in marketing the Carson City project.
"And we're already talking to two potential tenants, a software company and a light manufacturer," said Kelsey.
Kelsey said it's an ideal spot for a wireless service provider because of the land's elevation and bird's eye view of Carson City.
An Israeli security company has expressed interest, too, to build a computer bunker 200 feet underground, said Kelsey.
For now, Kelsey is calling the project the Carson Cyber Development Center and hopes to have much of it built within the next two years.
In the meantime, Kelsey, Parker and the company's 10 or so employees in Carson City and San Francisco, are also busy developing and selling software.
The company offers two products: iPlex Information Development Tools for extending the life of legacy systems such as mainframes, and iPlex Business Activity Monitoring for managing business processes.
InterPlex is now looking for additional financing, mostly to help with sales and marketing.
The company currently has three major customers, including a major movie studio and the State of California's Department of Health Services.
