SanMar Corporation’s shipping warehouse east of Reno is packed to the ceiling with boxes. Conveyor belts wind around hundreds of employees who pack 15 trucks waiting outside. This 600,000 square foot facility isn’t big enough, so the Seattle-area developer Lake Washington Partners will build a 1.5 million square foot warehouse. Half of it will be for SanMar. Lake Washington Partners President Jordan Lott says, they expect no problem filling the other half.

“We are bullish on Northern Nevada. We think that they are attracting jobs and that attracts development,” Lott said. "I think it says Northern Nevada is open for business. It is a community that wants jobs and wants development and that is where we want to be.”

Lott says, by this time next year, SanMar will be in a new 1.5 million square foot warehouse just north of Reno.

The warehouse will employ 400 people in SanMars business of shipping clothes. Lott says the commercial warehouse vacancy rate in the area is about 2 percent and the company has other properties in the area it hope to develop.

SanMar will vacate its current 600,000 square foot warehouse east of Reno. Lake Washington Partners plans 3 million dollars worth of lighting and heating improvements to that building. The partners are confident they will find new tenants for the refurbished warehouse because the vacancy rate in the area is near zero percent.