A  banquet hall and events center — almost 10 times larger than the available space at Great Wolf resort — is being proposed for Manteca.

It is one of two structures — the other is the city’s second bowling alley – that will be before the Manteca Planning Commission on Thursday, March 21, at 6 p.m. for approval.

The project is proposed for Atherton Drive south of the 120 Bypass between Union Road and Airport Way.

It is proposed for a vacant parcel stretching between the two curves on Atherton that sends the four-lane arterial alongside the 120 Bypass.

As such, the two facilities will have prominent freeway exposure.

The 54,090-quare-foot banquet hall/event center is in addition to renovation plans that have been approved for The Veranda’s second banquet hall/events center in Manteca.

That endeavor is going into a 24,800-square-foot building that formerly housed a furniture on Moffat Boulevard where it meets Woodward Avenue. It will have the capacity for 200 people.

The two buildings will flank a shared 500-space parking lot.

To give you an idea of its size, the city’s Big League Dreams sports complex has 535 parking spaces.

The two projects will give Manteca five banquet hall/event centers.

The others are the 5,652 square-foot complex at Great Wolf, The Veranda in downtown — a two-story facility in the shell of the original El Rey Theatre along with rooftop dining — and The Emory in Lincoln Center.

When the two new projects are done, Manteca will have banquet hall and events center space in excess of 120,000 square feet or the size of the Manteca Target store.

The proposed 82,009 square-foot bowling alley will give Manteca two bowling alleys — the same number that both Modesto and Stockton have.

It is unusual for cities under 100,000 to have more than  one bowling alley, especially in Northern California.

The bowling alley will have additional family entertainment options.

The project is the latest evidence that Manteca’s methodical pursuit of family entertainment-style businesses that e-commerce can’t replicate is working.

 Once built, travelers entering the city from the east via the 120 Bypass will be greeted with freeway views of the five-story Great Wolf Lodge — the largest hotel in the Central Valley between Redding and Bakersfield —  the new bowling alley-fun center/events center, and then Bass Pro Shops.

All the concerns dovetail into a strategy adopted 18 years ago to target recreational sports and family entertainment in a bid to capitalize on Manteca’s location in the middle of two distinct “regional” markets.

The first — and the one that attracted Bass Pro, Great Wolf and BLD — is Manteca being essentially equal distance between San Jose, Sacramento, and San Francisco. There are more than 18 million consumers within a 90-minute drive of Manteca.

The second is the fact Manteca is in the heart of the fast growing Northern San Joaquin Valley triangle with Tracy/Mountain House, Modesto, and Stockton at each point.

Within a 20 to 30 minute drive in each direction, the triangle contains almost 800,000 consumers.

The foundation of the marketing strategy is Manteca-Lathrop and the fact one or the other of the two communities that are literally joined together with a shared border has been consistently among the fastest growing cities in the state for the past five years in the fastest region in California.

Great Wolf’s corporate leadership, when they locked into building in Manteca in 2017, noted the importance of having other family-entertainment options near their resort.

They said at the time that draws like the municipal golf course, Delicato winery, Bass Pro Shops and Manteca Bowlero help Great Wolf book rooms.

That’s because oftentimes families won’t spend 100 percent of their time at the self-contained resort.

Also, Great Wolf executives noted the more nearby attractions, the greater potential they have for guests to be repeat visitors to the Manteca location. That’s based on the company’s success elsewhere.

Often there are multiple families that plan a stay together at their waterparks. They will include offsite things on the trip for adults to enjoy such as sampling the offerings of a local brewery, dining options that are different than those at Great Wolf, or other entertainment options such as taking in a movie at the nearby 16 screen AMC theater complex

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com