Investors are hoping to bring new life to a former printing plant in Stead, and do it in an eco-friendly way. The 447,000-square-foot building on Lear Boulevard used to have hundreds of employees.

"It was the previous RR Donnelley West Coast printing plant for newspaper retail inserts and Sunday magazines," said Bill Staab, Project Manager for Industrial Realty Group. "So customers like Target, Kohl's, Macy's, Parade, titles like that."

It's been shuttered for awhile.

"Covid put the nails in the rest of that coffin," Staab said. "Operations were shut down in December of 2019 and the property sold just this Spring, in March."

Instead of tearing it down, IRG is looking for tenants to take advantage of the existing infrastructure.

"We're in the process of demolishing the rest of the printing equipment in the building and looking for tenants," Staab said. "Prospective people to come in and re-adapt the facility. We're really looking for a process manufacturer, that would be an ideal application."

And they want the upgrades to be eco-friendly.

"It's green from a number of different standpoints," said Brian Armon, Senior VP with NAI Alliance. "Green from the standpoint that all this material doesn't end up in the landfill. Using solar technology and those types of things to be able to power the building to add to what's already here. Substantial infrastructure exists, but we'll be able to have additional things that will support that."

It's industrial space with a power supply, within city limits, on a hundred acres, with access to rail transportation.

"We're sitting miles away from the fifth largest economy in the world, which is the state of California," Armon said. "And from this location, we have a very unique geographic advantage where we can send product from San Diego to Seattle the next day. We're the only place on the West Coast that are able to do that. We also have that business-friendly environment that Nevada has always had; no corporate income tax, no personal income tax, these are all drivers for folks to come here."

He says industrial space in the Silver State remains extremely competitive.

"The last market reports that came out stated the industrial vacancy is less than 3% , which in essence makes it pretty close to zero," Armon said.

For those that were here when the building was built in 1985, it's a chance to see it bustling once again.

"For me, having come here to build the facility and see it through its entire life cycle, I was so excited when Industrial Realty Group bought this facility," Staab said. "Because they have a history of adaptations of unique properties like this. So I'm very excited to see that happen, bring back employment, bring back the core of what industry is about, that's the people you get to work with. That was the hard part seeing this go down. At one time it had over 500 employees. It would be great to see that type of employment reemerge in this location."