Manteca’s biggest business park yet - CenterPoint Intermodal Facility - is on track to break ground in January.

City Manager Karen McLaughlin and other key municipal staff representatives were told Wednesday by CenterPoint Properties representatives that there has been a significant increase of interest from potential tenants in the project. As a result, they are getting ready to move forward with the initial phase of the 3.1-million-square-foot facility as early as January. It is designed specifically to snag tenants that rely heavily on proximity to railroad intermodal complexes that load truck trailers and containers to and from trains.

The Illinois concern that was acquired and privatized in 2006 by the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) has all city approvals needed to start work on the 190-acre project in northwest Manteca bordered on the north by Lathrop Road and to the west of Airport Way.

CalPERS plans to invest $175 million into the project located directly across the tracks from the Union Pacific intermodal yards. Some 3.1 million square feet of logistics/distribution space will be built. There are four structures planned ranging from 132,778 square feet to 1,491,718 square feet. The biggest distribution center in Manteca today is Ford Motor Small parts at 550,000 square feet in Spreckels Park.

The project will generate upwards of 1,400 jobs. Of those 800 are construction jobs and 600 would be permanent jobs.

What is making the Manteca project appealing to potential users is its location n adjacent to the UP facility preparing to expand from 220,000 lifts to 700,000 lifts a year. A lift refers to the loading or unloading of a truck trailer for the rail-to-truck - and vice versa operations.

Users are expected to have large logistics and distributor needs that require tearing down products and either repackaging or reassembling and then prepare them for distribution. The project will have direct access to the UP yard to significantly reduce the potential impact for truck traffic.

Rail intermodal trailer and container moves have more than doubled since 1989 going from just under 6 million a year to 12 million.

CenterPoint notes that:

• intermodal traffic volume is up 5.4 percent in 2011 over 2010 levels.

• Santa Fe Railroad believes it can ultimately convert another 7 to 8 million loads in its service corridor to intermodal. Union Pacific estimates there are 11 million loads annually that they can add to their intermodal service.

• The Santa Fe’s intermodal location for Northern California is less than 15 miles from the CenterPoint location.

• The Manteca site is within an hour by rail of the Port of Oakland, the sixth busiest container port in North America with 2,050,030 container units passing through to in 2010.

•Transportation costs are 50.3 percent of the cost of logistics for a typical company. The direct connection to the UP intermodal yard goes a long way to reducing those costs.

Manteca is also at the heart of the third largest market — 17 million consumers — within a 100-mile radius behind New York-Long Island and Los Angeles. It is what attracted Bass Pro Shops to Manteca. That means trucks can travel to and from the distribution center to stores serving 17 million consumers easily within an eight-hour drive.

The site is virtually smack dab at the midway point Highway 99 and Interstate 5 accessed by Lathrop Road. It is also connected to the Highway 120 Bypass directly via Airport Way, which also provides access to Stockton Metro Airport.