Wild horses graze on the hills and valleys throughout the sprawling Tahoe Reno Industrial Park.
The 600,000-square-foot PetSmart building includes 50,000-square-feet for a separate distribution center for tropical fish, which are imported from Asia and quarantined before shipment to stores.
The building that will soon house Chewy.com pet supply facility was originally constructed as a spec building that sat idle for a while. The brokers for the 763,000-square-foot building held an open house using Segways for the guided tour of the wide-open space.
Ground breakings in TRIC often feature unique twists. When PPG (Pittsburgh Paint Group) broke ground on its plot that included heavy rocks, instead of turning shovels, the dignitaries gathered around an old-fashioned dynamite plunger to trigger a blast (from a safe distance, of course).
The back road into Tesla was originally named Portofino. Tesla asked to rename it Electric Ave., which was granted. It would have been difficult to do somewhere else or if another business was on the road because the county would have had to reimburse for letterhead etc.
Storey County inspectors were sent to Tokyo (with funds from Tesla) to better understand battery operations.
Tesla is buying a new used ladder truck for the emergency services department in TRIC to access the taller buildings. They have negotiated an agreement for the county to buy it.
In exchange for temporary offices in the county building, Switch brought in “screaming high speed Internet to this site,” Pat Whitten said. “When they move (to their own building), they’ll leave their cool stuff.”
The wild horses in the TRI Center are owned by the state. The TRIC developers and businesses love them and encourage their presence.
The county and developers are looking at increasing the size of the small reservoir on the sight by increasing the dam height.
Although Amazon’s main distribution center in the area is in North Valleys, several affiliated fulfillment centers, such as Quidsi, Inc., are in TRIC.
Roads in TRIC are built to highway standards in terms of pavement depth and subsurface compaction to accommodate heavy truck traffic.
Washoe County transferred about 600 acres of land between the Truckee River and Interstate 80 to Storey County, which could more easily run utilities to the site for development. A suggested use in the future would be hotels for visiting business executives.
Wal-Mart’s distribution center went from raw land to shipping in six-months and they actually created concrete on site. Two-thirds of Wal-Mart’s distribution center is refrigerated and has a section dedicated to bananas.
