Businessman to build Reno office complex

The office park planned along U.S.

395 just south of the Reno-Tahoe Tech Center will be the largest individually-owned office complex in northern Nevada.

Lynn Fritz, the San Francisco businessman who rolled out his plans for Northern Nevada Corporate Center last week, is no neophyte to Reno real estate.

He owns the office building at 350 S.

Center in downtown Reno and also owns industrial property near the airport.

And while he's pursuing his real estate interests, Fritz also is winning praise for his work to streamline disaster relief around the world expertise he developed with a family-owned company that was sold to UPS.

Fritz' project will consist of five office buildings one three-story structure and four two-story structures.

A site for a Hampton Inn hotel is adjacent to it.

The first building is scheduled for completion in April.

Architecture will be complementary to the buildings at the Reno Tahoe Tech Center.

Fritz is developing the project in association with Panattoni Development.

Although office vacancy rates in the South Meadows area were among the highest in the area last year, they've come down quickly in recent months, said Tim Ruffin, managing partner of Colliers International in Reno.

His company is leasing the Northern Nevada Corporate Center.

Among recent leases in South Meadows, Ruffin said, were Morrison University's decision to move into the Reno-Tahoe Tech Center building and the decision of PC Doctor to move its corporate headquarters to South Meadows from Emeryville, Calif.

With relatively little space available in the Meadowood area Templeton Development's Mountain View Corporate Center is the last big project available in the region Colliers International officials believe demand for office space will migrate farther south.

"We see it clearly as the direction of growth in the market," Ruffin said.

Among the strengths of the project, Ruffin said, is its exposure to heavily traveled U.S.

395 and the signage opportunities available to tenants.

Fritz sold his logistics company, Fritz Cos., to UPS two years ago for $437 million in stock.

Since then, he's been working with organization such as the Red Cross to take the lessons he learned in the logistics business to speed delivery of relief supplies.

The Fritz Institute started with development of software to locate, move and track materials needed in a relief effort.

More recently, it's been working to bring relief supplies to Iraqi civilians.