There’s a new street in town that’s aptly named “Entertainment Way”.
You can’t drive on it yet.
It’s located off Daniels Street just beyond Costco and right before the barricades blocking access to the $10.5 million extension to McKinley Avenue.
When the extension does open shortly before the first guests tentatively start arriving on March 23 at the Great Wolf Resort, the only direction you will be able to travel is south into the indoor water park resorts’ employee parking and delivery area.
Entertainment Way is stubbed north of Daniels Street as is Great Wolf Way that serves as the access to the 500-room resort. There is a third street complete with traffic signals stubbed off to the north — as well as the south — before you reach McKinley Avenue.
If all goes well that unnamed street could one day carry the name “Event Center Way” or even “Ice Arena Way”.
That’s because the third anchor of the City of Manteca’s envisioned 100-acre plus family entertainment zone (FEZ) may be a combination events center/ice arena.
The two new street names plus the third street yet to be named fit right into what the Manteca wants to make its mantra in growing the economy over the next decade — entertainment.
Entertainment dollars have been growing in importance in recent years as Manteca has endeavored to shed its bedroom community status by developing employment centers. First it was the Manteca Industrial Park, then Spreckels Park, with the Airport Way corridor now being built up. The vision calls for even more business parks between Lathrop Road and French Camp Road.
Big League Dreams and Great Wolf are the result of Manteca’s entertainment drive.
Manteca has also been trying to parlay more rooftops into more brick and mortar retail. The building of 600 plus new housing units annually will help the city to continue to draw interest along with using its central location to regional growth to snag the likes of Living Spaces furniture store that is now under construction on Atherton Drive at Union Road.
While the housing crash in 2008 gave the then fledging online retail business a boost, the pandemic is being even more ruthless in accelerating non brick-and-mortar transactions
The pandemic hasn’t been kind to such endeavors as waterpark resorts, recreational sports facilities, restaurants, or events where people gather. But such family entertainment is something that can’t ultimately migrate online.
Study will be done on
events center/ice arena
feasibility this spring
A $24,500 study the City Council commissioned last April covering the initial design work along with a feasibility study is expected to be completed by this spring.
The study’s cost is being split 50-50 by city taxpayers and Manteca Development Group.
The Manteca Development Group is actively marketing the FEZ on the city’s behalf. The principals in Manteca Development Group led by Bill Filios included those that either did the preliminary work or made possible major transformative economic developments in Manteca such as Spreckels Park, Del Webb at Woodridge, and the land deal that allowed the building of The Promenade Shops at Orchard Valley that allowed Manteca to snag Bass Pro Shops.
The city has toyed with the idea of an events center at various times since 2001. What got the ball rolling this time to the point of an actual study being conducted was the Calgary Flames expressing interest in locating offices and training facility for their American Hockey League affiliate — the Stockton Heat — in Manteca.
The concept is to provide a multi-use facility. It would include anchor use by the minor league professional hockey team plus recreational ice for youth and adult recreational hockey. The ice would be covered to allow the building to be used as an events center that could easily handle everything from trade shows and gatherings significantly larger than what existing venues in Manteca can accommodate.
B32 Ice Rink engineers are partnering with Archtechnia of Stockton to conduct the $24,500 study for Manteca.
The Wisconsin firm has built 250 rinks from community based facilities to National Hockey League complexes.
A complex that may be similar to what Manteca is considering was built in 2014 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin for $7.1 million. The 91,000-square-foot building includes two NHL-sized rinks. One rink has a seating capacity of 1,100 and the other 600.
Endless potential
seen for Manteca FEZ
The study will address not just actual design and square footage but the economic feasibility of such a project.
If the city ends up moving forward with such an endeavor, it would add to the marketability of the acreage the northern stubs of Entertainment Way, Great Wolf, and the unnamed street would access.
That is where Manteca believes the potential is endless for everything from restaurants, venues such as laser tag, golf driving ranging, and go-carts to climbing gyms and more.
The goal is to aim for growing family recreation market dollars that can’t be “disrupted” by the movement of business to the Internet by building off two draws.
The first is the 1 million annual visitors the existing Big League Dreams and Great Wolf will draw.
The second is the primary and secondary “stay-at-home” recreation market that has 2.5 million people.
Of those consumers, 900,000 are within a 30-minute drive of the FEZ site along the 120 Bypass that is today accessed via Airport Way and will be accessed by the new McKinley Avenue interchange sometime this decade. Manteca happens to the center of a triangle with Modesto, Stockton, and Tracy on various points.
Another 1.6 million people are within 30 to 60 minutes and reaches as far north as Elk Grove, as far east as Pleasanton, and as far south as Merced.
The secondary market that has an additional 9.5 million consumers within one to two hours and encompasses San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Santa Cruz, Sacramento, Roseville, Yuba City, Napa, Vacaville Fresno and points in between those
The potential of tapping into that market was outlined in a 2017 conducted by Entertainment+Culture Advisors (ECA) based in Los Angeles and Hong Kong.
Catering to the primary market is considered critical as it is a more solid base for supporting such endeavors during the week plus is much more likely to produce repeat customers.
Developing the FEZ with endeavors such as Dave & Buster’s (a non-gated dining and entertainment concept with mid-way redemption games and high tech video and stimulation attractions) that caters to teens, young adults, and families; SPIN (a Ping-Pong themed restaurant/entertainment center that also has art shows , ballet battles and such) catering to young adults; Lucky Strike (upscale bowling alleys) aimed at young adults and families; and similar ventures are what ECA indicated — based on the primary region’s demographics — would be needed to lure enough consumers to the FEZ to make it work.
18.5 million people
FEZ could draw from
Other opportunities the ECA explored are adventure attractions action sports parks, and participatory sports facilities.
The ECA study noted when the primary and secondary markets are combined with the overnight tourist market based on hotel occupancies from Turlock to Lodi and west to Tracy, there are 15.2 million possible consumers the FEZ could target. The overnight tourist market includes 1.8 million leisure tourists and 1.5 million business tourists.
The average household income based on 2016 data of those within 30 minutes of the FEZ site is $71,268 while it is $97,009 for consumers 30 to 60 minutes away. That compares to $99,536 in Oakland and $128,985 in San Jose.
The average age within 30 minutes is 33 years while it is 35.8 minutes within 30 to 60 minutes. That compares to 38 years in both Oakland and San Jose.
Of the households with 30 minutes, 45 percent of the households have children while 43 percent have children within 30 to 60 minutes. That compares to 31 percent in Oakland and 36 percent in San Jose.
Households within 60 minutes of the FEZ site plus those in Oakland and San Jose spend 4 percent of their household budget on entertainment and recreation.
Whether the events center/ice arena — or even the FEZ itself — will move forward is far from a done deal.
It should be noted it took 12 years from the time Great Wolf first approached Manteca about siting an indoor water park here to get the ball rolling with the initial study until construction as completed last year.
The BLD complex — owned by the city and leased by a Southern California firm — took eight years from when the first study was done until the first pitch was thrown.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
