Manteca’s elected leaders will review a land lease Tuesday that is part of a deal that will bring the city at least $600,000 annually to pay for city services.
And it won’t cost Manteca residents a penny given it will come from advertising revenue generated from two digital LED billboards along the 120 Bypass and Highway 99.
The deal, with OutFront Media, was put in motion by Mayor Gary Singh.
It is an idea that came from Singh’s property management dealings for clients.
In the property leases with billboard companies that some clients had, he noticed the substantial revenue stream the land-lease arrangements generated.
He approached City Manager Toni Lundgren and his council colleagues regarding securing property with high freeway visibility and putting rules in place to accommodate the digital billboards.
Lundgren and then City Attorney Dave Nefouse took Singh’s idea a step further.
They advanced a proposal to OutFront Media — a company the city filed a lawsuit against in the fall of 2022 in San Joaquin Superior Court to force them to honor a contractual clause that allowed the city to terminate a contract for three billboards on city property along the Tidewater Bikeway on Moffat Boulevard and remove them.
The proposal was simple. Remove the three low-traffic billboard sites for two high-traffic volume locations for digital signs along freeways passing through Manteca that have a combined 250,000 vehicles passing on an average day.
To make that happen, the city modified billboard rules, are annexing land on the southeast corner of the Lathrop Road and Highway 99 interchange and bought an odd-shaped 3.55-acre parcel on Atherton Drive fronting the 120 Bypass for $2.2 million several years ago.
The land-lease agreement for each site assures Manteca a minimum $300,000 yearly per location.
And if as revenue exceeds a set threshold, that revenue is split 50-50 at the Atherton Drive location east of Living Spaces furniture and three ways with a private property owner in the mix at the Highway 99 site.
The city would also be able to promote community events and municipal messages on the billboards at no cost.
The $600,000 contrasts sharply with the $2,070 a year — based on 2018 data — receives for leasing OutFront Media the three two-sided billboards along Moffat.
The city is also marketing the remaining part of the Atherton parcel for sale to a development concern, ideally a sit down restaurant.
They have addressed potential parking issues a high volume sit down restaurant could create by working with developers of the Living Spaces that is part of the larger Union Crossings retail complex.
The city anticipates the sale of that property will exceed what they paid for it. They money was from a set aside economic development fund the city created to pursue projects aimed at increasing city revenue and strengthening the Manteca economy.
When both billboards are up and running, the general fund that covers police, fire, park, and other services and such will receive $600,000 plus annually.
To give that context, that is the rough equivalent of either four firefighters or four frontline police officers.
The billboard venture has been nearly a three-year process to get in place so far.
It is part of the current council’s efforts to secure new sources of revenue to operate city services that includes the issuance of permits for legal store front cannabis sales.
The land lease agreement is being discussed Tuesday in closed session.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
