Manteca learned a valuable lesson in the 1990s.

Simply having a good location and zoning land for industrial and commercial purposes doesn’t cut it if a community wants to attract jobs and national chain stores.

Big companies can’t wait 18 months for a site to become buildable with connections to water and sewer among other infrastructure.  They either require divisible space in the form of pre-built “cube” buildings that developers such as Buzz Oates specialize in for fairly quick moves or else they need a site that is ready-to-build.

Manteca has standing inventory in several business parks such as the Manteca Business Center on Moffat Boulevard to accommodate small concerns. There is even cube space aimed for medium-size operations available in the business park adjacent to the Manteca Unified School District office on Louise Avenue. Up until this past week, Manteca did have a vacant 533,000-suare-foot warehouse available in Spreckels Park until it was leased by Delicato Family Vineyards for their wine distribution operations. Now it has nothing that can accommodate a large use.

That, however, is about to change.

Two major business parks made their way through the approval process in Manteca at the depths of the Great Recession. They are the 1,049-acre Austin Road Business Park in southeast Manteca and the 188-acre CenterPoint Business Park in northwest Manteca. In both instances respective development groups have spent upfront money to secure entitlements. Both can accommodate mega-distribution with buildings of a million square feet or more plus smaller ventures.

“The good thing about Manteca is that there is a good mix of space options for business,” noted Don Smail, the City of Manteca’s economic development director.

What makes the two new business parks appealing is the fact they are situated to take advantage of unique logistics needs. CenterPoint is being developed adjacent to the Union Pacific Intermodal operation that is being expanded from 200,000 truck lifts to and from rail flatbed cars per year to 750,000. Most long distance movement of freight is one being down using intermodal facilities.

Both Austin Road Business Park and CenterPoint have quick access to freeways that can reach 17 million consumers within 100 miles. Toss in the fact that the Bay Area is becoming inhospitable to distribution operations that need to expand due to land costs and traffic issues.

Experts indicate the two projects combined could ultimately create up to 13,600 permanent jobs.



Oakland’s loss is Manteca’s gain

The pending shift of container traffic away from being processed directly to trucks at the Port of Oakland means about 600 permanent jobs could be created in the CenterPoint Business Park that is designed to accommodate 4 million square feet of distribution centers.

Terry Price, a vice president who is overseeing the Manteca project, once they get full entitlement to build CenterPoint that it would take 12 to 14 months to develop the project.

It is designed for large distribution center users ranging from 250,000 to a million square feet. By comparison the Ford Motor Parts distribution center on Spreckels Park is 550,000 square feet.

Nash said the project will generate 1,400 jobs. Of those 800 are construction jobs and 600 would be permanent jobs.

Center Point - which is owned by the California Public Employment Retirement System - is planning to pump $175 million into the project.



Austin Road Business Park: Even sweeter than Spreckels Park

Austin Road Business Park is somewhat of a different animal. Austin Road Business Park is a multi-use project with business parks, retail and housing.

It is like Spreckels Park on steroids.

The project generally south of Highway 99 saddling Austin Road is so big it could:

• Create up to 13,000 jobs - or close to 50 percent of the existing jobs in the city. Spreckels Park has generated just under 2,000 jobs so far.

• Generate 10,200 residents or about a seventh of the existing population of Manteca.  By contrast, Spreckels Park added about 600 residents.

• Convert 1,049 acres from farming and rural residential use to urban development. Spreckels Park consists of 362 acres.

• Accommodate 8 million square feet of industrial/business park, and office use or space equal to 17 times the coverage area of the Ford Motor Parts distribution center on Spreckels Avenue,

• Add up to 3.5 million square feet of general commercial or about 26 times the square footage of the Manteca Costco store.

• Add 2,358 traditional single family homes and 1,840 multi-family dwelling units such as townhouses, apartments, and condos. Spreckels Park added 166 single family homes.

• Impact Ripon Unified schools even bigger than Manteca Unified schools as most of the residential would be within Manteca city limits but within the Ripon Unified district. The number of students going to Ripon could easily exceed the current enrollment of Ripon High.

Austin Road Business Park has a vested map and has been annexed to the city. It is in the hunt to land one of the new generation of mega-distribution centers and infrastructure can quickly be extended to the site.

Housing - and commercial - will not be the first part of the project to development. Instead, they are focusing on the business park portion.

That is driven by two realities. First, Manteca has more than enough residential projects waiting in the wings to take care of its housing needs for the next eight to 10 years if the economy were to turn around today. Commercial develops near housing.

The other significant factors are many large companies are looking at ways to reduce costs and to set the stage to take advantage of the next upturn. Manteca’s location to 17 million customers and its access to key transportation corridors makes it a leading candidate for distribution and small-scale manufacturing that serves the region or the north state.