Call it the case of the missing blocks.

Manteca Mayor Willie Weatherford found it curious that the Manteca Transit station has an address of 220 Moffat Boulevard and not 100 even though it is the first building on the block and borders South Main.

He also said it would have been reasonable to give the transit station a South Main Street address since the focal point entrance faces Main even though the lobby entrance faces Moffat.

Pro Touch Automotive, located east of Grant Street, is 255 Moffat. That makes sense as street addresses change at new streets. But Taqueria La Costa, west of Grant Street is 205 Moffat. The edge of its parking g lot is less than 100 feet from South Main

“What happened to the 100 block of Moffat?” the mayor asked.

No one at city hall could explain the irregularity in the street addresses or why the 100 block of Moffat doesn’t exist.

It gets better. There is also no 100 block on the east side of South Main.

That’s because somewhere along the line an alley between Yosemite Avenue and Moffat Boulevard known as Otis Street was elevated to street status.

The Hope Chest thrift store is located just south of Otis and is numbered 208 S. Main Street. By default, that means the property north of Otis where Bank of America is located would be the 100 block if a structure faced the north-south street.

Here is where it gets tricky. Los Amigos Tire Service located south of Otis is 123 S. Main while the Auto Zone is 147 S. Main and Don’s Mobile Glass is 151 S. Main. Cross the railroad tracks and Manteca Floral is 339 S.Main.

“Street addresses aren’t supposed to be changed by alleys,” the mayor noted.

Otis Street, by the way, is where Weatherford as a rookie officer on the Manteca Police force responded to his first homicide in 1966. A wino had killed another wino over a bottle of booze in wooden flophouses that once lined the alley.

Pitching tent

at interchange

There’s no place like home even if it is smack dab in the middle of an interchange.

A homeless individual has pitched a 10-foot by 10-foot hexagon tent in the middle of cottonwoods on the southwest quadrant of the Airport Way and 120 Bypass  interchange.,

Work starts on

new clock tower

Manteca is months away from having its second clock tower. Work has started on a new 75-foot AT&T cell tower southwest of the Yosemite Avenue and Commerce Avenue intersection that will be disguised as a clock tower.

The triangle shaped tower will completely hide the antennas. The tower structure will match the architectural styles of the center’s other buildings that happen to include a T-Mobile store.

The equipment for the cell service at the base of the tower will be screened with a 6-foot masonry wall painted to match the rest of the retail center. It also will be landscaped. The tower is taking part of the approved site for a third building. That structure, not being built at this time, will be smaller than originally approved. The center wraps around the site where McDonald’s plans on building the replacement for their fast food restaurant located just down the street on Yosemite next to the Strike Zone bowling center.

The AT&T tower is the second disguised tower in Manteca along the Highway 99 corridor. A monopole camouflaged as a giant palm tree stands behind the Christian Worship Center on Button Avenue.

The tower at Yosemite and Commerce is the first to advance through city hall for approval after the Manteca City Council last year told staff they wanted no ugly cell phone towers in Manteca.

Manteca will go from one clock tower currently to two by the time 2014 rolls around. The municipal transit station just finished at Moffat Boulevard and South Main Street has a four-sided clock tower just under 40 feet.

Which  brings up the obvious question: Just how soon will the city adjust the clock faces for the time change that happens this Sunday at 2 a.m. when we fall back to gain essentially another hour of sleep?