Smith's Marketplace Is Coming to Kiley Ranch: Spanish Springs Gets Its Anchor

The biggest open question in the Reno-Sparks retail pipeline just got answered. Per the Reno Gazette-Journal, Smith's Food & Drug has confirmed plans for a roughly 123,000 SF Smith's Marketplace at 6795 Pyramid Way, built as part of Barclay Group's Kiley Ranch Marketplace project at Pyramid Way and Wingfield Hills Road. Northern Nevada Business Weekly reports the store will include a drive-through pharmacy, online pickup, and a Smith's fuel center, with an opening targeted for fall 2027.

This did not come out of nowhere. A building permit application for a ground-up Smith's Marketplace at the site was filed with the City of Sparks in May, per the Reno Gazette-Journal, described as Phase 1B of the project. We flagged it in our mid-year outlook. Now it is official.

Why this anchor matters more than most

Kiley Ranch Marketplace is a planned 400,000 SF power center on 46.7 acres, the first new power center in Sparks since 2005, per Kidder Mathews, which handled Barclay's $25.6 million land acquisition and leases the project. The trade area draws from more than 130,000 residents with average household incomes above $100,000, and Pyramid Way carries more than 40,000 vehicles a day.

Spanish Springs has been the region's fastest-growing residential submarket for a decade, and its retail never caught up. The rooftops are there. The daily-needs retail mostly is not. A Marketplace-format Smith's, which pairs a full grocery with general merchandise and a fuel center, is a purpose-built answer to that gap.

For a shopping center, a grocery anchor does three things at once. It generates daily trips rather than weekly ones. It sets the credit floor for the center's rent roll. And it fixes the pricing for everything around it. Until an anchor is named, pad and inline rents at a development are a negotiation. Once it is named, they are a schedule.

What it means if you are a tenant

Phase 1 of Kiley Ranch is still projected to deliver in the fourth quarter of this year, with 18 spaces totaling roughly 116,000 SF listed as available, per LoopNet. The Smith's opening in fall 2027 is the date that matters for anyone who wants to be open when the traffic arrives.

Work backward from it. A fall 2027 opening means a lease signed by early 2027 at the latest, which means letters of intent this fall and winter. The concepts that historically do best next to a grocery anchor are the ones that piggyback on the daily trip: quick-service and fast-casual restaurants, coffee, medical and dental, fitness, salons and personal services, pet, and cellular. If that is you, the conversation should start now, not when the store opens.

Two negotiating points specific to anchored centers: ask for a co-tenancy clause tied to the grocery anchor operating, and ask for the exclusive-use language that protects your category from a second operator in the same center. Both are far easier to get before the center is 80% leased than after.

What it means if you own retail in Spanish Springs

Second-generation centers along Pyramid Way will feel two effects, in this order. First, more traffic, because a Marketplace-format store draws from a wider radius than the neighborhood grocers already there. Second, comparison pressure, because tenants now have a new-construction alternative for the first time in 20 years.

The owners who come out ahead are the ones who use the next 12 months to lock in renewals and refresh presence before Phase 1 opens. New-construction shell rents at $4.00 per square foot per month and up are not competition for a well-kept center leasing at $2.00 to $2.35, which is where our second-quarter data puts Class A second-generation inline space in Spanish Springs and South Reno. A dated center with month-to-month tenants is a different story.

What it means if you are an investor

Pad sites and outparcels near a newly named grocery anchor are the most reliable value-creation trade in retail real estate, and this one comes with a public date. Ground leases and build-to-suits for fuel, car wash, quick-service, and bank pads along Pyramid Way and Wingfield Hills will be underwritten against a fall 2027 anchor opening. Existing single-tenant properties within a mile get re-priced on the same calendar.

We also expect this to pull forward decisions on the other large project in the submarket, the roughly 41,000 SF Spanish Springs building that Nevada Business Magazine reports is completing this fall. Two deliveries in one trade area within a year is unusual here. Investors who want Spanish Springs exposure should be looking now, and looking off-market, because the marketed inventory in this submarket is close to zero.

Quick hits since our last update

• Legends at Sparks Marina closed to Alturas Capital Partners for $103 million on July 23, per Connect CRE, as we covered in the mid-year outlook. Yard House is set to open there August 31.
• Paris Baguette at McCarran Marketplace is now targeting an October opening, per the Reno News & Review.
• Alioto's Focacceria opened July 11 at The Sticks in Midtown, per the Reno News & Review.
• The Depot Craft Brewery & Distillery ended regular restaurant service on August 9 after 11 years on East 4th Street, per the Reno Gazette-Journal, while continuing to brew, distill, and host private events.
• Peg's Glorified Ham n Eggs closed its original downtown location at 420 S. Sierra St. in July after 27 years, per KTVN. The chain's other Northern Nevada locations remain open.

If you want to talk through Kiley Ranch, the Spanish Springs submarket, or what a named anchor does to a specific property, email icochran@logicCRE.com or call (775) 225-0826. Our Sparks retail page has the submarket overview.