Mound House selected by California electronics firm

The story is so common anymore than Marc Basche doesn't feel the necessity to tick off detailed reasons his company decided to open a new facility in northern Nevada.

"It's all the obvious reasons from a business standpoint," he said the other day.

But for the record, he said, the reasons are taxes.

Business costs.

The desire of Basche to raise his children somewhere other than Southern California.

Power and Environmental International, the company that Basche heads as president, is working to remodel a 15,000-square-foot building at Mound House into a manufacturing facility and sales office.

The facility will be the third for the company headquartered at Van Nuys, Calif.

It also operates in the Chicago area.

Power and Environmental International specializes in what Basche calls "critical infrastructure" gear such as uninterruptible power supplies, battery backup and the like that keep businesses and data centers in operation when the lights go out elsewhere.

Its products also range from air conditioning to flooring systems for computer rooms.

Its customers include plenty of big names such as Sprint, AT&T, British Petroleum and Home Depot.

Locally, it recently inked a deal with KOLO-TV.

While the company founded in 1990 works as a distributor for a handful of manufacturers, its primary business is remanufacturing and selling used equipment, often purchased from failed technology companies.

Power and Environmental International currently employs seven people at Mound House, and Basche said the company expects to employ about 20 when the northern Nevada operation fully opens next year.

Next up for the company will be construction of another 20,000 square feet probably next year to more than double the size of the Mound House operation.

Basche said the company will be looking to hire both sales and technical employees in coming months.

Carole Brill of Miller Industrial Properties, who represented Power and Industrial International in its search for a building, noted that the price of property in the region provided a key advantage.

The company, she said,"bought a wellpriced facility, which only Nevada could provide and still leave them with the funds to convert and meet specific requirements." Mallard Investments represented the seller of the building at 6 Pony Express.