Northern Nevada developer Roger Norman and his team have spent the past few decades building one of the largest industrial parks in the world, just east of Reno. Most of the property at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center is now sold, and you'd think Norman, who's 84, might be ready for a break. But he already has his eyes set on something new.
He gave 2 News an exclusive update on what he's working on now.
Part I
On a sunny day in early autumn, Norman and his team take a crew along on a tour of an expanse of empty desert.
"We got the cook book on TRI Center," Norman said, "so this is TRI II."
At this point-- the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center-- or TRI-- is a household name in Northern Nevada. It's home to more than 150 companies-- including Tesla, Switch, and Blockchains, 30,000 jobs, and billions of dollars in economic activity. It's been a 20-year journey for the crew behind TRI-- led by Norman and Lance Gilman-- the biggest development they've ever done, with a footprint larger than Reno and Sparks combined.
"That's 104,000 acres," Norman said. "So, we went from 40, to 4,000, to 104,000."
And he's already eyeing another one. Something a little smaller, right next door, but a county away. TRI II.
Just outside of Fernley, the property spans 20,000 acres in Lyon County, and on the far end, shares a border with its predecessor in Storey County.
"TRI creates huge incomes for Storey County," Norman said, "and we plan to do the same thing for the City of Fernley. Hopefully we can create a lot of jobs and figure out how to solve some of their traffic issues and utility issues."
It's an ambitious plan: taking a huge chunk of vacant land, building a whole new bypass road through the middle, adding infrastructure, and filling it with businesses and housing.
The process won't be easy. The land is a literal checkerboard of different designations; some private property, and some BLM land, which will take a bill in Congress to sort out. But at this point, these veteran developers say, we're out of easy options.
"The demand is here in Northern Nevada, and the demand has really been instigated by the success at TRI," Gilman said. "They're coming. We need more places to put them."
And if they're honest, these guys will tell you, they like a challenge. For Norman, that's characterized his career. He started at the bottom, shoveling coal and manning gas stations, and worked his way up.
"I used to do smaller industrial parks, and I actually installed it myself. So you learn it from the ground up."
One of those lessons, he says, is leaving the community better than you found it.
"You can't just go in and spin off your property and make a lot of money and leave," Norman said. "You've got to fix the community's problems. That's part of the responsibility."
That, and taking care of your people. He's 84 now, and when you ask him to define his legacy?
"I don't know what that would be," Norman said. "I hope I leave a lot of people employed and a lot of money on the table for everybody."
Norman also says he never plans on retiring. He'll just keep on building developments as long as he can. However, this next one is tricky. It's going to take action from Congress to get all the land in place before anything can get off the ground.
Part II
The team behind the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center wants to build it a younger sibling; they're calling it "TRI II" outside of Fernley. They've been working for a few years to get the new, 20,000-acre project off the ground, and while people locally are on board, it's not as simple as just buying the land they need.
They'll have to jump a lot of hurdles, including an act of Congress. If they can pull it off, they'll be following some protocols they developed in their 20-year project at TRI.
Roger Norman, the founder of the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, says he paid about $20 million for the land to build TRI. Now, he estimates its value is in the billions. Although, he added, he doesn't keep track of that stuff.
"We can do the same thing out in Fernley," TRI Center Partner and Managing Director Lance Gilman said. "And it's interesting, because in Fernley, a lot of the same elements exist. For example, Fernley's not a wealthy little community, but with tremendous opportunity ahead of them."
For a few years now, it's been full steam ahead on TRI II. All the way up until they hit a snag.
"There's a lot of unforeseen issues that you will have to deal with," Norman said. "Like, one a minute!"
This minute, it's an issue of pretty large proportions. The land they want-- located just west of Fernley, has a problem. Like much of the open land in Nevada that runs alongside the old railroad system, this area has been divided into squares, alternating between private ownership and BLM land, like a checkerboard.
"It's not any good to the government because it's not contiguous green space," TRI Project Manager Kris Thompson said, "and you can't develop on the private land because you don't have access, right?"
That's left this area basically unusable, despite its location at a hub of highways and rail, at a time when Nevada commercial and industrial real estate is at a premium.
So why is it like this? Turns out, it's a holdover in land use policy from the 1800s. And it took a trip to the Nevada State Railroad Museum to understand why.
Wendell Huffman, retired curator for the museum, explained that around the time of the Civil War, the federal government wanted a rail line connecting the western part of the country. They didn't have money to build one, but they did have land.
"The idea with the land grant was, 'We'll give you this land, and you can sell the land and use that money to build the railroad," Huffman said.
The government gifted every other square of land, for 20 miles bordering the tracks, to the railroad company, holding back the other squares, hoping that the private development would boost the value of the public land for the federal coffers as well. It was a scheme that had worked well in other parts of the country, where the land was easy to farm. But in the high Nevada desert?
"That was a great idea," Huffman said, "but nobody really wanted it."
Huffman said the plan ended up funding just 16 miles of track, and the railroad companies were left holding the property tax bill.
"In fact, the railroad on a couple of occasions tried to give the land grant back to the government," he said, "and the government wouldn't take it."
And yet, more than 150 years later, the land is still divided the same way-- an effective deterrent to development.
The TRI team, however, isn't deterred. They're lobbying for an act of Congress to change the land designations, and Representative Mark Amodei is sponsoring a bill that will do that. He said getting it passed, along with other provisions in a larger lands bill, would be his top priority for this term.
"If you want to do warehousing; if you want to do affordable housing; if you want to do any kind of development, that's what you have to do to continue to evolve," Amodei said.
House Resolution 3173, just reintroduced on May 10, would transfer ownership of federal land to six different counties and municipalities in Northern Nevada. The biggest parcel is in Lyon County: 12,085 acres, which would transfer to the City of Fernley. The city could then sell it to the TRI team, or any other developer.
Unfortunately, when Amodei introduced the same bill in the last session of Congress, it died in committee. This time around?
"I'm confident that we'll get it out of the House this time," Amodei said.
As for the Senate, Amodei said he's met with key senators and is optimistic, calling it a "work in progress."
But with all this work, why not just build somewhere else?
"There just is no more land," Thompson said. "There's no more land. So these lands bills are the only answer."
And that's a problem felt keenly by the people, and the mayor, in Fernley.
"We are really limited on the space that we have available for big projects of 12+ acres," Fernley Mayor Neal McIntyre said. "So if this lands bill goes through, it's going to be really good. Really good for the city of Fernley."
That city has already seen major population growth, but McIntyre says, 60 percent of its residents have to commute elsewhere, like TRI or Reno, for work. A new industrial park with thousands of jobs right in their backyard could improve their quality of life. And the TRI team says there's no shortage of interested employers.
"What's happening, and what's driving us, is the companies haven't quit," Gilman said. "Our phone rings weekly, and I wish we had another 20,000 acres."
The TRI team says they've already acquired most of the available land in the project area: about 10 square miles. And they have an offer ready to purchase the rest of it from Fernley, if the bill goes through. The bill also has a long list of smaller projects, like cemeteries in Sparks and Pershing county, land for public parks, flood abatement projects, and conservation areas all across Northern Nevada.
Here is a breakdown of the key provisions in the bill, provided by Rep. Amodei's staff:
Download PDF
To see the full text of the Northern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act, click here. And to track its progress through Congress, click here.
