Tesla & the USA Parkway Promise
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The biggest news to rock the Reno housing market in recent years was the announcement last year that Tesla would be locating its Gigafactory just east of town. The factory will be the battery machine behind Tesla's plans to be selling 500,000 electric cars by the year 2020, and not only did it create more than 700 construction jobs in the past year, it has created a buzz about the potential for making Reno a center for high-tech (translate "high paying") industrial and service jobs.The new factory broke ground in 2014 at the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, a business/industrial park east of Sparks that already had 6,000 people showing up for work each day before Tesla even eyed it as a possible location. (Apple's iCloud Data Center is on the other side of the freeway with more than 300 acres of elbow room to grow into.) Â With private rail connections to the Union Pacific, industrial park tenants can guarantee their on-line clients one-day shipping from Seattle to San Diego without the regulatory hassles of doing business in California.OK. But the good news gets even better. As part of the incentive package that lured Tesla to Nevada, the state promised to invest $43 million into acquiring the right-of-way for USA Parkway, an 18-mile stretch of road that could be a game changer for those real estate markets east of Reno. Â Six miles of the roadway already exists (from I-80 into the industrial park), and officials say the extra 12 miles will connect the road to Silver Springs.
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If you've never heard of Silver Springs, don't worry. (A lot of people haven't) Â But if the roadway goes as planned, Silver Springs, Dayton, Mound House and other Eastern Nevada outliers are likely to become more familiar names, as USA Parkway opens the route from Carson to I-80 East without having to battle Reno traffic. (Call or email me for more information on investment opportunities in these areas.) Â Here's how it looks on the map:
