Great Wolf is opening a month ahead of schedule.
The biggest hotel ever built in the Great Central Valley as well as Northern California’s first indoor water park will now open July 1.
Great Wolf Resorts Chief Executive Officer Murray Hennessy made the announcement Wednesday before the start of a sneak preview hard hat tour of the $180 million complex that includes the signature 95,000-square-foot indoor water park, 45,000-square-foot family entertainment center complete with restaurants, and amusements, a 500-room hotel, and a 12,000-square-foot conference center.
“Great Wolf is a game changer for Manteca,” Mayor Ben Cantu told the gathering that donned hard hats with wolf ears attached. “The world will be coming to Manteca.”
That may not be as big of a superlative as it sounds.
Hennessy underscored the fact Great Wolf expects the Manteca location to make a big splash when it open which is why it was built with the largest water park it has among 18 locations.
BLD already attracts 500,000
people to Manteca, Great Wolf
will lure 500,000 more a year
The firm is marketing the Manteca Great Wolf in some instances as the San Francisco Great Wolf given it is on the Highway 120 Bypass that is traveled by the large chunk of the 4.1 million annual visitors from around the country and the world opting to visit Yosemite that work their trip to the national park in with a stay in San Francisco.
Before the Manteca Waterslides that were just over a mile to the southwest from the front entrance of the 29-acre resort that you will be able to access in five months by turning on Great Wolf Way off the extension of Daniels Street closed, a large share of its summer business were tourists stopping on their way back from Yosemite.
Great Wolf is also planning to build off the synergy of being across the street from the Big League Dreams sports complex. The six replica baseball fields have been booked solid on every weekend since opening 12 years ago and is the most successful BLD site in terms of play and revenue.
BLD lures more than 500,000 people a year to Manteca. That’s the same number Great Wolf is projecting will book rooms at the resort on an annual basis.
But while the water park that will eventually offer day passes in addition to the two-day water park use that comes with booking rooms that start at $199 for six people has been garnering a lot of attention for its expected economic impacts on Manteca, it has another component that will also serve to vault the city into a major destination in the Northern California Megaregion — a 12,000-square-foot conference center.
It includes a main ballroom that can be split in thirds or used as a large venue that has a capacity of 360 people in a classroom seating, 450 people in a banquet configuration, and 600 for theater-style seating. Additional smaller spaces means Great Wolf with the right mixture of booked events can accommodate over 900 people at one time.
Great Wolf gives Manteca 2nd
largest conference center foot
print in one spit in Northern SJ Valley
That makes it the second largest conference-style center in terms of available space in the same location in the Northern San Joaquin Valley after the Modesto Centre Plaza.
The Manteca Great Wolf will have an outdoor pavilion as well making it one of only two locations. The other is at the Great Wolf in Grapevine, Texas. One of the biggest users of the pavilion is expected to be events such as competitions staged by Varsity Cheer that has an established working relationship with Great Wolf.
The conference center will have its own separate entrance given that events often attracts many attendees that have not booked rooms at the hotel.
At other locations the conference center at Great Wolf has created a demand for booking nearby hotel rooms.
That means Great Wolf — besides generating room taxes that in the initial year Manteca will receive $2 million in a split that changes after 10 years more in the city’s favor and then goes 100 percent to the city — will be staging events that will help fill other hotel rooms in Manteca. All hotel rooms are assessed a 12 percent per night room tax that goes to the city’s general fund.
The city and Great Wolf split the first 9 percent of the room tax while the balance — a 3 percent increased approved by voters on all hotel rooms after Great Wolf signed the deal to locate in Manteca — goes all to the city.
Manteca expects to pocket
$129.1 million in taxes from
Great Wolf in next 25 years
Manteca expects to incur $350,000 annually in providing non-user fee based city services to Great Wolf such as police and fire. Subtracted from the $592,000 in property and sales taxes the city will receive in addition to its share of the room taxes, it would provide a net flow of $242,000 yearly into the general fund. That is on top of the $2 million annually in room taxes to help fund general city services and $123,000 yearly for Measure M public safety positions.
From all sources for the general fund after one full year of operations the city will pocket $2,242,000.
After 10 years, Manteca’s share of the original 9 cents on the dollar room tax increases to 75 percent. Starting in the 26th year the room tax sharing deal ends and all money goes to the city.
The original analysis of the deal projected Manteca would net $99.1 million during the first 30 years Great Wolf is open. Thanks to the voter approval of a measure that took the room tax up to 12 percent from 9 percent, the figure is now $129.1 million as all of the increase goes to the city.
That means the city will have parlayed a $20,200 investment — the amount Manteca paid in 1973 for the 29 acres they sold to Great Wolf for the resort — into $129.1 million.
Manteca 15 years ago realized there was a demand for conference space to serve the greater region as companies such as Verizon and electronic firms that had operations in San Jose, Sacramento, San Francisco and even Fresno were looking for a “midway” spot to bring personal together. Existing hotels had space capped out at 50 or so people. The Convention & Visitors Bureau had a number of requests for larger venues but could only offer social halls during the week. Firms were looking for larger hotel-style conference centers.
Great Wolf hopes to capitalize on that market by taking advantage of Manteca’s location. They also cater to wedding receptions and other events.
The Manteca location will have 500 year-round jobs of which 250 will be full-time. In addition there could be up to 100 more seasonal jobs. More than 2,000 distinct workers have or are working on site to build the resort.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
