Utah-based food distributor plans North Las Vegas hub

Next time you see a Nicholas & Co. truck plying local roadways, wave hello.

They’re your newest corporate neighbors.

The Utah-based food distributor said Thursday that it will open a distribution hub in North Las Vegas.

From its Salt Lake City headquarters, which it plans to keep, Nicholas & Co. ships more than 10,000 products ranging from alligator meat to whitefish to restaurants and other big customers in Nevada, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and Arizona. It bills itself as the Intermountain West’s largest independently owned, broadline food distributor. The 500-employee company has done business in the Las Vegas Valley for more than 10 years. Company officials didn’t return a call for comment before press time, but they said in a statement that they want the local center to boost customer service and strengthen their position in the marketplace.

The 200,000-square-foot distribution center will be on a 35-acre parcel near Sloan Lane and North Las Vegas Boulevard. Red Rock Development of North Carolina will build the project.

The Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance estimates a five-year economic impact of $90 million. When it opens in about a year, the plant will employ 90 people, and max out at about 150 in the next half a decade. The average wage not including benefits will be $26.52 an hour, about three times the typical warehouse pay, said Chris Zunis, senior vice president of economic development for the alliance.

The announcement capped two years of recruiting by Zunis and the alliance, a local agency contracted by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development to diversify Southern Nevada’s business community. Utah offered a “substantial” package of incentives to convince Nicholas & Co. to build a second center there, Zunis said, and economic development officials in Phoenix were in the hunt as well.

The Governor’s Office of Economic Development, which includes logistics and distribution on its list of key sectors to target, signed off on incentives including a 6.1 percent sales tax abatement on equipment purchases, and a 50 percent cut in company payroll taxes for the first four years. The office also approved $625,000 in financing through the Nevada Catalyst Fund, a $10 million pool of state cash designed to coax businesses here.

“The name of the fund is ‘catalyst,’ and it’s exactly that,” said Tom Skancke, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance. “It’s a small fund we can use to give companies a final consideration to relocate to Nevada.”

Zunis said Nicholas & Co. was a good candidate for catalyst funding because it’s well-established, at 74 years old, and it’s had a “solid, aggressive growth pattern” in the last decade.

Nicholas & Co. won’t actually receive the funding until it starts hiring, Zunis said.

Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512. Follow @J_Robison1 on Twitter.