NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – A huge industrial park in North Las Vegas is helping create new jobs in Southern Nevada.
Fortune 500 companies such as Crocs footwear company and Smith’s grocery store have opened up distribution centers in Apex Industrial Park. The area located off Interstate 15 at U.S. Highway 93 is booming with development these days.
“It seems like every week there is a new update that there is a new company that is interested, that there is a new developer that is building a building, or build to suit, or a fortune 500 company that wants to be in our backyard,” Jared Luke, senior director for the City of North Las Vegas said.
The 18,000-acre park has 7,000 acres of developable land, which includes Lower/Southern Apex, Middle Apex and Upper Apex. It was set aside by the city to generate revenue for North Las Vegas.
“It is a chokepoint for a lot of freight coming in from Long Beach and other ports in the California area, disbursement to the Western United States,” Luke said.
Crocs is now shipping from a 1-million-square-foot distribution facility, one of it’s three major centers around the world. It is the only single footprint structure of this size in Southern Nevada. Nearly 400 employees are currently working at the facility.
“The workforce in Las Vegas was just fantastic, we just got a great group of people in, we could hire great managers and supervisors, and it really reinforced for us that as we expanded business that we wanted to continue to grow in Las Vegas,” Frank Smigelski, senior vice president of distribution and logistics for Crocs said.
Smigelski said over the next 3-5 years it could employ nearly 1,200 people at the North Las Vegas center.
San Francisco, California-based Prologis also plans to build an 11 million square-foot development that will take up 879 acres at Apex Industrial Park. The company is installing the site’s needed infrastructure, including water and power.
And more jobs are expected.
“Over the next 10-20 years it would be about a $7 billion private investment creating about 45-70,000 jobs depending on the types of companies that come in,” Luke said about a recent economic report.
Developing the area hasn’t been easy though, the City of North Las Vegas has had to invest more than $300 million as part of a public/private partnership to bring water and sewer infrastructure to the area. There is also federal legislation, that if passed, would make the permitting process easier for businesses.
“That is going to be a tremendous lift in Apex, we still have some BLM corridors for utilities that are in place, that once that lands bill moves through DC, it is going to help us on timing issues when we have to cross those corridors,” Luke said.
Apex will eventually become four of five separate industrial parks and will have their own ecosystem and identity.
A new 15-mile water pipeline to Apex is scheduled to be completed by 2028.
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