The South San Joaquin County’s fanciest place for a drink and getting a bit to eat — at least by location — could one day be right where the current offices for River Islands at Lathrop are located overlooking the San Joaquin River.

Cambay Group bought the building housing the old Mossdale Marina restaurant/bar years ago. It has since been remodeled into offices for the 11,000-home River Islands at Lathrop planned community.

River Islands has turned down numerous requests over the years to sell the liquor license. They have kept the license active with occasional “open bars” throughout the years.

That’s because the long-range plan is to turn the building at Stewart Road and Manthey Road into a yacht club.

That will happen at some point down the road after Stewart Road is closed as the River Islands’ main entrance.

The two-story building has a sweeping view of the river, a nice riverside grass area, plus docks. It is also right off the Manthey Road bridge and a parallel bicycle bridge that runs over the South San Joaquin Irrigation District pipeline that delivers water to River Islands as well as Tracy.

It’s worth noting that in the future you’ll be able to bicycle from Manteca to the linear park atop the super levees overlooking the San Joaquin River.

The bicycle bridge across the river is near where the bicycle path from Manthey Road to West Yosemite Avenue runs along the 120 Bypass to connect to Lathrop.

There is a segment of the same bike path that runs along Interstate 205 to Paradise Avenue at the end of Manthey Road for people pedaling to Tracy.

Eventually bicyclists will be able to travel through the park along the levee’s edge and reach a future bridge to access roads connecting with Tracy.

About xeriscape

& roundabouts

A Bulletin reader points out that Tracy has a perfect example of two things that Manteca needs — xeriscape and roundabouts for major roads.

In fact they are both in one location at 11th Street and Grant Line-Kasson roads just off Interstate 5. The two-lane roundabout handles a great deal of truck and vehicle traffic. San Joaquin County also employed a minimalist version of xeriscape at the location.

Manteca is talking about deploying roundabouts as part of the future southern extension of McKinley Avenue that could have four lanes of traffic. Four new subdivisions that have either broken ground or are nearing that point  south of Woodward Avenue in Manteca have roundabouts as part of their internal street system. There are also several planned on Woodward Avenue at the entrance to the new neighborhoods.



Sheriff’s forum

is on March 25

The candidates’ forum that Sheriff Steve Moore and Sergeant Pat Withrow are attending is Tuesday, March 25, in the fireside room of the Central United Methodist Church in Stockton that’s located at 3700 Pacific Avenue.

The event being staged by the San Joaquin County Taxpayers Association is free and open to the public. It starts at 6 p.m. with a meet and greet followed by the program at 6:30 p.m.

It was inadvertently listed in Saturday’s Bulletin as simply being on Tuesday.

For more information on the taxpayers group go to www.sjtax.org



Former sheriff

backs Withrow

Speaking of the sheriff’s race, there is little doubt who former Sheriff Baxter Dunn is supporting in the June primary for the job of Sheriff of San Joaquin County.

Dunn has a large Pat Withrow campaign sign in the front yard of his Manteca home.