CDW a catch for valley

Jennifer Shubinski

Thursday, Feb. 24, 2005 | 10:52 a.m.

After a nationwide search, Chicago-based CDW Corp., a provider of technology products and services to business, government and education, has committed to opening a distribution and technology center in North Las Vegas.

The 513,240-square-foot build-to-suit facility at DP Partners' LogistiCenter is the largest single such transaction in Southern Nevada in the last couple of years.

The company plans to transfer 30 employees from Illinois to Nevada. Including those workers, CDW initially will employ 170 to 180 people at the Nevada center. Of those workers, about 15 are expected to work in its product configuration center when the company opens here later this year.

The 25,000-square-foot configuration center will be three times the size of the company's existing configuration center at its Illinois headquarters. Through the center, CDW is able to customize the name-brand computers it sells to fit its customers' business needs, Doug Eckrote, senior vice president of purchasing and operations said.

The new center will allow the company to improve its efficiency and productivity, he said.

Attracting CDW to Nevada is a boon for Southern Nevada -- and North Las Vegas -- which has continually tried to diversify the economy and bring in companies with a high tech component.

"Basically, the CDW facility is a building wrapped around a very high-tech distribution system," said North Las Vegas Mayor Michael Montandon. "They were looking for a place where they could start from the ground up."

Eckrote said the company took everything into account, from freight carriers and costs to employment pool when looking for a new location for a distribution center.

"We really looked at all the different places out there," he said. "Working with our partners and freight carriers we got a lot of their input as to which place makes the most sense."

CDW did not ask for any incentives from the state, said Somer Hollingsworth, president and chief executive of the Nevada Development Authority.

"We thought we'd lost them a couple times," he said. "There's not a company that you don't bring in today that's not a tough battle. Other states are throwing all types of free stuff at them."

Bringing CDW to Southern Nevada puts the area on the map for other major West Coast distribution facilities to consider, said Suzette La Grange, a senior associate at CB Richard Ellis, Las Vegas who led the brokerage team that represented DP Partners.

"This transaction marks one of the largest build-to-suit transactions in Southern Nevada and the single largest in the last three years or so," she said.

Other large transactions in recent years included the GES Exposition Services building that moved into its two build-to-suit buildings totaling 850,000 square feet in December 2002. Walker Furniture leased up to 420,000 square feet late last year in an existing industrial building in North Las Vegas.

CDW was named by Fortune magazine to its "100 Best Companies to Work For" annual list for the seventh consecutive year in January. The company ranks No. 14 on this year's list.

Construction on the site already has begun, and CDW expects the center to be completed and operational by the end of the year.

The new facility will serve customers in the western United States and will complement CDW's existing 450,000-square-foot Illinois distribution center.

Costs for the center are expected to be between $30 million and $40 million for machinery, equipment, and leasehold improvements. CDW expects to incur another $5 million to $6 million of operating and start-up costs related to the facility.