Commerce in the Reno-Sparks area always has had its back against the eastern wall of the Truckee Meadows.
To the north, west and south, industry found a home.
The time has come to pull a 180. With the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center under way some 15 miles east of Sparks, just inside the Storey County line, the region's business face is turning full circle.
It won't happen overnight, or next year, or five years from now. The business park, ultimately to span more than 100,000 acres, is so far a scattering of buildings with lots of hilly sagebrush in between.
But pick any high point to stand on, and you have panoramic evidence of where this is going long-term.
Crews are grading for an eventual new highway that will link the park with Silver Springs 18 miles to the south. To the north, a bigger bridge over the Truckee River leading to a new interchange with Interstate 80 is planned. Closer in runs the Union Pacific railroad mainline.
From a business viewpoint, it's a jolt to the salivary glands: a truck-friendly four-lane interstate with a direct shot to California and West Coast points. A major rail line with plenty of spur possibilities. An entirely new road to Silver Springs and the fast-growing Highway 50 corridor of Lyon County with thousands of new homes ? convenient for Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center workers ? envisioned.
The business park is a regional economic feast in the making and, indeed, parochialism was nowhere in sight earlier this month during a lunch and tour of the site for Washoe County commissioners.
Sure, tiny Storey County gains immeasurably with a new economic and tax base.
And true, Washoe commissioners only can watch as the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center rises just out of their jurisdictional reach.
But many potential benefits are ahead all around. Such major projects tend not to stay untethered to population centers for long. The new highway to Lyon County will attest to that.
For Washoe, the industrial park could prompt further development along I-80 and the Truckee River from Lockwood east.
Plenty of precedent exists.
Once isolated from Reno proper, today's Stead is linked by a continuous parade of North Valley businesses and residential developments.
To the south, miles of pastures once buffered Reno and isolated settlements along the Geiger Grade and the Mount Rose Highway. Today, commerce - from high-tech to retail - connects them big-time.
And the sign leaving Reno westbound on I-80 used to read, "Verdi 10 mi" with next to nothing along the way. Today, the city limits - carpeted with homes, gas stations and such soon-to-be-built businesses as Cabela's - reach that once-sleepy outpost.
So it's not surprising that developers have turned east, whether pushed by more affordable land and housing prices or convinced they can make a go of it commercially given the transportation ingredients already in place.
Even farther to the east in Fernley, Amazon.com, Trex and others already have achieved viability beyond the Truckee Meadows' eastern wall.
Anything in between is almost certain to gain the same.