CenterPoint Properties wants to build a 404,657-square-foot concrete tilt-up industrial warehouse building on 24.75 acres fronting the west side of Airport Way north of Del Webb at Woodbridge and south of Lovelace Road.
The plan also calls for a possible 134,50-square-foot addition at a later date.
While no tenant’s name is attached to the plans being reviewed by the Manteca Planning Commission at Tuesday’s 7 p.m. meeting at the Civic Center, 1001 W. Center St., CenterPoint Properties typically doesn’t break ground on such buildings unless they have a client signed or are in serious negotiations. It isn’t unusual though for warehouse development firms in strong markets such as the southern part of San Joaquin County to build spec buildings to have ready to market to firms.
Two major distribution centers have opened in the past 10 months in Tracy — Amazon and the FedEx hub. They join a long list of distribution centers in Tracy, Manteca, and Lathrop that includes Ford, Dryers Ice Cream, Lineage, JC Penney, Home Depot, Restoration Hardware, WestPac, Safeway, Orchard Supply Hardware and others.
The three cities are on the radar of firms due to the area’s strategic location equal distance from San Jose, San Francisco, and Sacramento with access to three major freeways, Union Pacific’s intermodal yard between Manteca and Lathrop, Santa Fe Railroad’s intermodal yard north of Manteca, Stockton Metro Airport and the Port of Stockton. There are more than 18 million consumers within 100 miles of Manteca.
CenterPoint is being required to pay for the future placement of traffic signals at Lovelace Road and Airport Way.
The proposed building is four-fifths the size of the Ford Motor Co. small parts distribution center in Manteca’s Spreckels Park.
Crothall Healthcare opened in 2014 south of where the new building is proposed. Crothall’s 60,150-square-foot industrial building houses a laundry and linen service.
CenterPoint, which is owned by the California Public Employees Retirement System, represents a potential overall investment of $175 million in buildings and improvements before tenants move in. Projections anticipate 600 permanent jobs will eventually be created when it is built out.
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 Distribution Center at 550,000 square feet in Spreckels Park.
Users at CenterPoint 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 Union Pacific rail to truck yard to significantly reduce the potential impact for truck traffic.
Expansion has been approved for the UP intermodal facility in Lathrop. It is expected to double the current workforce of 67 railroad workers to 137.
And when it is done, the regional capacity for intermodal movements will soar to 1.3 million units a year between the UP complex and the Santa Fe intermodal facility north off Manteca between Austin Road and Jack Tone Road. That is the equivalent of 3,561 truck movements a day.
The UP facility on Roth Road that abuts the city limits of Manteca and Lathrop. The railroad facility can currently handle up to 270,000 lifts or containers a year. At build-out that number will reach 730,000 lifts.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com