James Hardie Building Products is building a 370,000-square-foot manufacturing plant that will employ about 100 people in Patrick at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.
The Australian maker of fiber cement products last year began scouting sites in northern California and two locations in northern Nevada, the Patrick park and an industrial center in Fernley, according to Tom Miller, owner/broker with Miller Industrial Properties, who brokered the deal for the manufacturer.
The company eventually chose a site in Elk Grove, Calif., but ran into escalating costs due to regulations, taxes and fees, said Miller.
Company officials then returned to Nevada and decided on the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center because it could obtain the water rights it needed for its manufacturing process, said Miller.
James Hardie purchased 50 acres in the Patrick-area center and started preliminary construction of the plant earlier this year.
The plant is expected to be completed by yearend and the company hopes to begin operating it in early 2005.
In January, in a tax abatement petition to the Nevada Commission on Economic Development, the company said it planned to hire about 100 employees here at an average wage of $18 per hour.
The company received an abatement of sales and use tax on about $20 million in new equipment and on half its property tax for 10 years.
