CenterPoint Business Park has been coming up short in the race to land employers at the approved 4 million square foot plus industrial park in north Manteca bounded by Lathrop Road, Airport Way, Roth Road, and the Union Pacific Railroad intermodal facility.
That, however, is about to change.
CenterPoint is preparing to submit plans to the City of Manteca for spec buildings that can be quickly subdivided to tailor to the needs of prospective tenants.
The national business park developer was able to land Crothall Laundry fairly quickly. Its strategy up until now has been to build to suit.
But after a number of prospective employers attracted to the South County triangle of Tracy-Manteca-Lathrop vetted the site due to its strategic location to lucrative Bay Area and Sacramento markets and passed over it in favor of Tracy and other area locations that already had existing spec or shell buildings, CenterPoint has decided to change its strategy in Manteca.
Most firms shopping for distribution/manufacturing space want to move quickly and can ill-afford to wait the year or so it would take to get a new building built from the ground up. The same spec building approach has helped elsewhere such as near Arch Road in Stockton.

Garden Club judges
art entries Monday
The Manteca Garden Club will be judging the Manteca Unified School District art contest entries at the club’s holiday luncheon on Monday, Dec. 14, at noon in the McFall Room of the Manteca Library.
Paula Elias noted the club sponsored the art contest to select a winner that will serve as the door prize at the garden tour on May 7. It also will be used on flyers advertising the annual garden tour.
Proceeds from the tour go toward scholarships and city beautification projects.  Club member Tom Savage will be distributing scholarship applications to the high schools soon while Tom Powell is working with city contact Cody Ross on tree planting at Woodward Park.