Great Wolf Lodge — the largest private sector investment ever in Manteca — is moving toward an August groundbreaking.
City Manager Tim Ogden indicated Tuesday that the 30 acres Manteca is selling Great Wolf to build a $180 million destination resort with 500 hotel rooms, a 109,767-square-foot indoor water park, as well as various restaurants and other amusements is now is escrow. The land transaction is expected to be completed by the end of July.
Ogden’s announcement came during the same meeting that the City Council retained NorthStar Engineering Group to coordinate the Great Wolf Lodge site design with the design of the extension of Daniels Street from its current terminus next to Costco to McKinley Avenue. The $419,155 agreement will also include completing the Daniels Street improvement plan that includes the infrastructure under the roadway, roadway landscaping design, and assisting with the bidding process.
The Daniels Street extension will cost $7.5 million. It is required to be in place by the time Great Wolf expects to open its doors in early 2020.
*The 500-room hotel will be the largest in the 450-mile long Great Central Valley that stretches from Redding to Bakersfield.
*Even with a split of the room tax the resort generates for 25 years to help finance the project, it will be the city’s biggest source of taxes when it opens.
*With 350 fulltime equivalent jobs — 250 fulltime and 250 part-time positions — it will be the second largest private sector employer in Manteca behind Doctors Hospital of Manteca.
*It will employ the greatest number of construction jobs ever for a single project in Manteca by employing 1,397 people in various building phases earning $76.3 million.
*It will give Manteca the biggest private sector year-round destination resort in the Northern San Joaquin Valley drawing 500,000 visitors a year.
*Great Wolf will be the largest non-distribution center building in Manteca in terms of floor space coming in with just over three times the size of the 140,000-square-foot Costco store next door that is currently the largest.
The funding for the Daniels Street extension comes from $21 million set aside for the South Area Regional Infrastructure Project from the final redevelopment agency bond sale. To date, $6.3 million has been spent on connecting a major sewer collector pipe that relies on gravity flow from south of the 120 Bypass to the wastewater treatment plant.
When a short segment of pipeline under Woodward Avenue is completed when builders develop on adjoining parcels, sewage will flow from gravity from the Woodward Park area all the way to the treatment plant. That will eliminate power bills for lift stations to move the wastewater as well as any need to replace pumps. It will help keep monthly wastewater service charges from increasing.
Plans call for the existing forced sewer main to eventually be cleaned and converted into a gravity flow line to take treated wastewater from the plant to irrigate parks and other areas south of the 120 Bypass.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
