A state-of-the-art electronic billboard is coming to the 120 Bypass.
It’s definitely a story.
But it’s the backstory that combines two major shifts in Manteca municipal policy implemented by elected leaders and executed zealously as well as meticulously by city staff that’s the bigger story.
They are:
*taking a proactive approach to problematic properties that scare off the private sector for a variety of reasons and transform them from blight or perennially empty fields into positives for the community and the economy.
*developing in-house capability to pursue creative solutions to various issues — from economic development and fighting blight — to street maintenance.
The property where the billboard is almost exactly smack dab at the midway point of the 120 Bypass through Manteca.
It is an odd triangle shaped 3.85-acre parcel the city just recently closed escrow on for $2.2 million.
The land is to the west of Living Spaces on Atherton Drive.
It is also just to the east of where a new car dealership has been proposed. It is part of a retail project that includes a four-story Woodbridge Spring Suites hotel on the southeast corner of the Airport Way and 120 Bypass interchange.
The triangle parcel is a prime location but it’s size and odd shape makes it difficult for traditional development.
The city wants to change that.
At the same time the city has been in negotiations/settlement talks with Outfront Advertising.
They are the firm that holds a lease to four billboards on city property that is part of the Tidewater Bikeway along Moffat Boulevard.
The city has been trying to end the arrangement for years as spelled out in the lease but the firm has refused to do so.
The city has been working to make the proverbial lemonade out of two lemons — the odd parcel along Atherton Drive and the Moffat Boulevard billboards that are basically in a city park.
The Tidewater Bikeway was developed from abandoned railroad right of way the city bought from Union Pacific Railroad in the 1990s.
A such, they inherited the billboard leases.
The city has crafted a solution that, in exchange for removing the billboards along Moffat, Outfront Advertising will be allowed to install the electronic billboard on what is now city property along the 120 Bypass.
The city will receive annual revenue from the electronic billboard with a built in escalation clause for inflation.
They also will have billboard time to promote city and community events.
As for the rest of the 3.85 acres, the city is exploring various options.
It may include a “holding pattern” approach while waiting for nearby retail development and ongoing city growth to enhance the parcel’s value for sit-down restaurants and such.
One idea that has been batted around is the creation of a city-owned food truck court created from scratch.
The goal would be to leverage a location that would draw vendors with unparalleled freeway exposure just like the private food court in Lathrop along Interstate 5.
At the same time the city intends to look for a private sector concern to buy the property eventually with assurance retail or dining concerns will be built.
Besides incentives the city could offer, they could intercede to work with nearby Living Spaces for joint use of parking lots that would make projects on the 3.85 acre parcel more feasible.
It is an extension of what the city has done in the past, but is being pursued on a more widespread scale and not simply a moonshot approach.
The moonshot, of course, is the nearly 160 acres of city owned land that was connected to the wastewater treatment plant when it was needed for the potential field application of treated wastewater.
But those plans changed.
Evolving treatment technology and the move toward recycling wastewater is part of it.
But so was the realization the city was sitting on 160 acres of prime freeway accessible land.
And once the McKinley Avenue interchange opens this spring, it will be more prime as it will be between two interchanges a mile apart.
Thirty acres was developed as the city-owned Big League Dreams sports complex that has been leased to a private entity to operate and maintain.
As for the rest, the city assumed the role of being a land developer for property it owned next door to its own wastewater treatment plant.
They got entitlements in place through the environmental review process that allowed the city to sell 30 acres with clearance to build a 500-room hotel near indoor waterpark to Great Wolf.
The main infrastructure has been put in place as well for another 100 acres of city owned land being marketed as a family entertainment zone.
The Loma Brewery is moving toward groundbreaking at Daniels Street and Milo Candini Drive is part of the FEZ.
The city bought two parcels in downtown that had not been redeveloped since a fire in the 1970s.
They went out and found a private sector concern willing to develop a 5-story low-income senior apartment complex on the northeast corner of Sycamore and Yosemite avenues.
Once they had a development deal in place for the project, the city sold the land.
The city is also working to make a similar deal with the front half of 8 acres they bought at 682 South Main but for a non-age restricted affordable housing apartment complex.
The back half of the site is where the city’s homeless navigation center is being pursued.
In-house staffing &
in-house solutions
The city’s stepped up level of being a de facto land developer when it comes to parcels that are underused or vexing to do something with, would not be possible without adequate — and qualified — city staffing in key positions.
Manteca in recent years has secured an on-staff economic development specialist.
They also brought the city attorney’s office in house.
That has allowed the city to make more use of the city attorney and their own legal staff.
It has allowed stepped up blight enforcement and quicker responses given the city attorney is on campus and is 100 percent devoted to city business.
As such, it is allowing brainstorming for creative and effective outcomes such as finally getting rid of four unwanted billboards in a city park while at the same time improving the economic development on a problematic parcel.
It will be far more reaching plus provide positive community impacts when compared with the paltry yearly lease payments for land the Moffat billboards on.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
