The Daniels Street extension — the key roadway that will access the 500-room Great Wolf Lodge now under construction as well as open up more city-owned land for development as a family entertainment zone — is ready to go to bid.
The $8.5 million project will take Daniels Street where it now ends by Costco to McKinley Avenue.
The $180 million Great Wolf project that includes an indoor water park and conference center due to open by mid-2020 will be accessed from Daniels Street.
The city is also moving toward groundbreaking on adding a fourth interchange to access Manteca from the 120 Bypass at McKinley Avenue.
That interchange will serve growth south of the 120 Bypass as well as a massive Lathrop employment center that will abut McKinley Avenue.
It is also needed if Great Wolf exercises an option on city land to add up to 300 more hotel rooms.
The biggest new traffic generator in the area, however, is likely to be the city’s FEZ being designed to pursue regional dining and entertainment draws to pull patrons from Tracy, Modesto, and Stockton as well as Manteca, Lathrop, and Ripon.
The road extension that will also include all infrastructure such as water, sewer, storm and underground utilities such as cable, electrical power and phone lines is targeted to be completed before the Great Wolf opens.
The Daniels Street extension is being paid for out of proceeds from Manteca’s final redevelopment bond sale that has $21 million set aside for South Area Regional Infrastructure Improvements. There is $14.2 million left in that account after work was finished earlier this year on extending a gravity flow wastewater treatment line south under the 120 Bypass to serve new development in southwest Manteca. That allows for an existing forced pump sewer line now serving existing development all the way in the southeast portion of the city east of Woodward Park when the final segment of a new line developers have been putting in place as they build projects. There is only a short stretch that needs yet to be built. That will happen when adjoining land developers so existing residents aren’t paying for the cost of the new line.
When the line is completed, sewage will flow by gravity to the wastewater treatment plant to eliminate the need to power and keep maintaining pumps at lift stations along Woodward Avenue. The existing line will then be cleaned and repurposed to move treated wastewater suitable for irrigation parks, landscaping, and school grounds by gravity from the plant. It would also connect with purple pipe systems developers are being required to put in place to so common landscaping won’t use drinking quality water that is rapidly becoming a precious commodity for the South County in California’s never-ending water wars.
The City Council meets at 7 p.m. at the Civic Center, 1001 W. Center St.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
