When the last remaining parcel in the South Meadows Business Park and Double Diamond Ranch sold a few days ago, it marked the completion in 12 years of a project that once was predicted to take 25 years.
But in the early 1990s, developer Lance Gilman recalled last week, there was plenty of betting that the project never would begin let alone reach completion.
And even after the last 17.83-acre parcel was sold in the 2,700-acre development, a lawsuit rooted in the contentious early years of the South Meadows development continued to wend its way through the federal courts.
When a company created by Gilman and the father-and-son team of Don Roger Norman and Roger Norman paid $8.4 million in 1988 for the parts of South Meadows that later were developed into office and industrial space, they thought the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers had firmly ruled on the parts of the property that needed to be protected as wetlands.
Robert Helms, who paid $11.6 million for the residential part of the property, also thought he had a done deal with the Corps of Engineers.
After a strong outcry from environmental groups, the Corps of Engineers revoked its ruling on the wetlands and undertook a new study.
Instead of the 28 acres of wetland in the original study, the new study identified 230 acres.
The Corps of Engineers reversal has been challenged as an illegal taking of their property by Gilman and the Normans in a court action that's still pending.
But in the early 1990s, the delays were almost more than Gilman could take as the interest clock kept running and expensive studies were required.
"It damn near took me to my knees," he recalled.
After Reno officials approved a plannedunit development to cover the South Meadows Business Park, the developers started getting their feet under them with the decision of Lockheed Mountaingate to build an office in the park.
The Lockheed operation, since departed, was among the first technology-related employers in northern Nevada.
The business park was further spurred when International Game Technology decided to consolidate its northern Nevada operations into a new headquarters building of a million square feet in South Meadows.
And the sales came, Gilman said, even though property in South Meadows was priced at $5 a foot twice the going rate in the region.
The developers supported that figure, not through comparisons with other properties in northern Nevada but by analysis of similar business parks throughout the West.
At the same time, the Normans and Gilman continued to play a high-stakes financial game.
Helms, the developer of the residential neighborhoods at Double Diamond Ranch, in 1994 filed for bankruptcy protection.
Gilman and the Normans decided to make a play for the residential property in part to protect their own interests but couldn't muster the financial resources.
They struck a $30 million deal with the trustee in bankruptcy to buy the property but the deal required repayment within three years.
"We had only 36 months to market and sell enough property pay off the note,"Gilman recalled.
And in those 36 months, the developers needed to get the property annexed to Reno and win city approval for their plans.
Kreg Rowe, these days one of the top executives of Tanamera Commercial Development, saw the potential of Double Diamond, put together the capital he needed and bought 3,000 lots.
"I give him incredible amounts of credit," Gilman said.
For his part, Gilman said he takes pride in the jobs created in South Meadows which is home to companies ranging from IGT to smaller homegrown firms as well as the 3,000 homes and apartment complexes built at Double Diamond.
These days, Gilman's attention is focused on development of the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, the 104,000-acre project at Patrick that will be the largest industrial park in the world.
