Manteca is McDonald’s kind of place — five times over.

Developers Thursday indicated McDonald’s will likely be part of the Marketplace at Main shopping center at Atherton Drive and South Main Street approved Thursday by the Manteca Planning Commission.

The McDonald’s will be located on the intersection’s corner just north of a planned car wash.

It will be the city’s fifth McDonald’s.

It will also be the second McDonald’s in Manteca with quick access to the 120 Bypass. The other is two miles away off of the Airport Way exit at Daniels Street.

 If it opens in a year when the city’s population is expected to reach 90,000, Manteca will have one McDonald’s for every 18,000 residents.

Based on current populations Tracy has four McDonald’s or one for every 22,800 residents and Stockton has 14 or one McDonald’s for every 23,000 residents.

Developers plan to anchor the project with a 40,000-square-foot market.

The junior anchor building will have 45,000 square feet. That is more space than the primary tenant supermarket.

The Marketplace at Main in its reconfiguration also has 25,000 square feet in additional retail and dining  space.

It includes three freestanding fast food-style restaurants with drive-thru lanes, a car wash, and two separate areas for small retail stores.

One of the two retail areas will be a freestanding building while the other will be between the supermarket and the junior tenant.

Project means improved

Main traffic movements

Besides possibly bring a supermarket to southwest Manteca, the project will also help address a  longstanding traffic bottleneck.

It is one of three approved projects that will make it possible to widen Atherton Drive to Woodward Avenue to two lanes in both directions.

It also will help widen Main to two lanes headed north between Atherton and the 120 Bypass interchange. It will include a dedicated northbound lane that exits onto the Bypass.

They also will fund a traffic signal at Woodward Avenue and Main Street as well as upgrade the signals at Atherton and Woodward to all synchronization between the two intersections to optimize traffic flow.

The retail center developer will also widen southbound Main from the freeway to Atherton Drive to two lanes when the northbound work is done if the city has the $1.5 million at the time to cover the southbound work.

The city would then form an area of benefit requiring other development as it occurs to reimburse the city for the $1.5 million.

The other two projects tied into the Atherton to Woodward work as well as the signals at Woodward and Atherton are:

*The 1,301 home Griffin Park neighborhoods now under construction along South Main Street to the sooth of Woodward.

*The 210-unit SOMA apartment complex on the southeast corner of Atherton Drive and Main Street.

The project that starts work tied into the conditions of approval involving off-site street improvements first will do the work and then be reimbursed for their respective proportionate share by the other projects as they develop.

The city has started initial design work for what will eventually be a four-lane diverging diamond interchange — similar to the one at Union Road — using the existing Main Street overcrossing.

The proposed Quintal Road project on the northeast corner of Atherton and Main  will have 672 apartments, 48 duplexes, and 98 homes.

The potential exists  for 13,200 feet of retail commercial and 430 apartments on the northwest quadrant of the Atherton-Main intersection.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com