In Shape City a few years back wanted to convert a racquetball court into open space to make additional room for their existing exercise equipment.
Bureaucrats at City Hall used it as an opportunity to demand the health club put in more parking. A seven-month struggle ensued that ended with Manteca’s elected leaders siding with In Shape City’s request to simply provide more room for its existing exercise equipment so therefore there was no need for additional parking.
Fast forward to today.
B.F. Funsten was getting ready to pull up stakes and relocate to Stockton taking with them 130 jobs.
The new team in place at City Hall – led by City Manager Steve Pinkerton and Community Development Director Mark Nelson – swung into action.
They went knocking on the door of the firm at Industrial Park Drive and South Main Street that is a wholesale distributor of flooring to see what could be done – if anything – to keep them in Manteca.
They discovered that the firm had been supplied with erroneous fee information by a consultant B.F. Funsten hired. City staff pointed out the fees was actually $600,000 less than they were told. They also promised to fast-track the 18-month review process for an 86,000-square-foot addition to the warehouse and a 6,500 square-foot addition to the office.
Work has already started on the expansion and is two weeks ahead of schedule.
“Manteca means business,” Manteca Willie Weatherford said. “It (the change in the approval process and attitude) is something the council has been working on with staff for a long time.”
The city has put in place a one-stop permit center and is completing the streamlining of basic approvals to speed up the time between an application and issuance of a permit.
The next step in the process of making Manteca more business friendly comes on Monday, Oct. 5, when the city sits down with representatives of Manteca’s 75 largest employers to talk about what the city can do to make doing business easier in Manteca.
“Retaining a business is much more cost effective,” Weatherford said noting the real wealth in a community is created by the public sector and not the private sector.
The gathering on Oct. 5 in Conference Room “B” in the Tahoe Building, 1783 Yosemite Ave., behind Kaiser Hospital runs from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.
It will include:
•A short talk by Weatherford about the importance of retaining and helping existing businesses.
•The state of the city’s finances and services offered by Pinkerton.
•Information on the city’s one-stop permit process, fee deferral program, and status for new business in Manteca provided by Nelson.
•The status of the San Joaquin County Enterprise Zone and targeted employment area plus notations on the summary of benefits that will be offered by specialist Ed Wanket.
•A question and answer session.
