The truth, they say, is stranger than fiction.

Manteca could soon become the wedding destination of the Northern San Joaquin Valley.

How could that be?

Two words: Villa Banchetto

Villa Banchetto is part of a project before the Manteca Planning Commission on March 21.

It is one of two “entertainment/event venues” that will bookend a 7.18-acre parcel along Atherton Drive midway between Union Road and Atherton Drive.

The other is the 40-lane Three Strikes bowling alley and family entertainment center.

Both dovetail into Manteca’s strategy to develop a regional family entertainment zone and conference center at the heart of one of California’s second fastest growing region.

So what does Villa Banchetto have in mind?

The investors want to create the ultimate wedding/wedding reception venue.

That’s its primary focus.

Coming in a close second is to be a go-to place for events such as conferences, as well as Christmas and engagement parties and such.

So exactly what are they planning?

It is 54,900 square feet one-stop wedding spot.

It includes:

Two wedding chapels.

Six dressing rooms for brides and grooms.

Three first-floor banquet rooms that seat 200 apiece than can be combined into one hall seating 600.

A large kitchen with two service lines — one providing “domestic food” and the other “ethnic food.”

Two second-floor banquet rooms that seat 100 apiece that can be combined into one hall seating 200.

A video room that will provide recordings of wedding (and other events) in progress including a live video feed on YouTube.

16,400 square feet of assembly space which, by itself, is three times larger than the existing conference center at Great Wolf.

Speaking of Great Wolf, it’s not a stretch to think they might get some honeymoon bookings.

Or more likely, wedding parties.

It is a growing trend that weddings include such gatherings.

All of this is not far-fetched.

Manteca in 2023 had 3.2 million visitors.

More than 500,000 were in rooms booked at Great Wolf.

And it also included those drawn to the elegant Veranda Events Center downtown that is the repurposed third act of the original El Rey Theatre that is booking its share of weddings, among other events.

There are also five other hotels that have high occupancies. A sixth is getting ready to open. Two more are moving through the approval process.

Those rooms are being filled by players and their families booking rooms while playing an endless stream of youth and adult softball and baseball tournaments.

BLD tournaments make it next to impossible to book rooms on the weekend.

But that is only part of the equation.

Hotels in Manteca have an occupancy rate north of 70 percent during the week.

There is a reason.

Manteca is central to a lot of places.

San Francisco is short drive.

Yosemite is a short drive.

Sacramento is a short drive.

The Gold Country is a short drive.

The Delta is next door.

It all makes Manteca an ideal central location to use as a base to explore this neck of the woods in California.

It also is also a central place for business people to meet.

If you have people in San Jose, Sacramento. San Francisco, and Fresno, then Manteca is about as central as you can get.

Beginning to get the picture?

The family entertainment zone (FEZ), where Loma Brewery will soon break ground near the BLD sports complex, is the real deal.

Snaring Great Wolf — a 10-year odyssey that Manteca beat out Brentwood and Gilroy to land — was the thing that made it real.

It isn’t by chance that Villa Banchetto and the Three Strikes family entertainment center opted for Manteca.

Great Wolf, as former Councilman Richard Silverman once noted, is one giant 5-story billboard along the 120 Bypass at the western edge of the city advertising Manteca as the place to be.

The FEZ is 100 plus acres once designated for land disposal of treated wastewater that the city owns.

It’s very concept is e-commerce proof.

That means what the FEZ will offer can’t be supplanted by Internet-based businesses.

And it is located in the center of a triangle that has 1.2 million consumers — many of them fairly well-heeled middle class families within 20 miles.

It includes four of the perennially the four fastest growing cities in California — Manteca, Tracy, Lathrop, and Mountain House.

Let’s talk about those four cities.

Private sector research shows the annual median household income south of the 120 Bypass is in excess of $107,000 — roughly $30,000 more than Manteca overall.

Rest assured, River Islands at Lathrop, Mountain House, and south Tracy are higher than that.

Keep in mind this is the direct result of six people putting in motion an idea.

It started back in the Willie Weatherford mayoral era.

Four years had passed since the demise of the Manteca Waterslides in 2004 after a three-decade run.

Council members on a journey to a Big League Dreams complex in Texas noticed an adjacent outdoor waterslides park.

The council was intrigued.

Manteca still was remembered for its waterslides — the first modern version in California —  far and wide.

The council — that also included Vince Hernandez, Steve DeBrum, John Harris, and Debby Moorhead — wanted to explore the possibility of bringing waterslides back to Manteca on city-owned land west of BLD.

No less than three waterpark operators, once word got out, were interested.

That’s when Bill Filos — a developer that was part of successful efforts that converted the shuttered sugar beet processing plant into Spreckels Business Park, packaged the land deal that led to Bass Pro and Orchard Valley, and snared Del Webb at Woodbridge — suggested the city think bigger.

He mentioned an indoor water park.

It was a concept as foreign in Manteca as a zero visibility snow blizzard on the first day of spring.

But once council members did research and visited one, they were intrigued.

That is when the moonshot was launched.

And how Manteca prevailed with a 10-year process with Great Wolf agreeing in 2018 to build a 500-room resort for $180 million on land bought from the city, had everything to do with the city making the site “indoor water park” ready.

It was more than just having an infrastructure plan to support a resort and the funding mechanism to fund such improvements to serve a resort.

They conducted — on the city’s dime given they owned the land in question — an exhaustive and costly environmental review process over nearly three years to have development entitlements in place for a 500-room indoor waterpark resort.

It was aimed at luring a handful of niche companies.

Having a site ready to develop was why Manteca prevailed.

Them, once they landed the big fish, they set about using it as bait to attract family orientated entertainment concerns.

Loma Brewery was hooked that way.

And so was Villa Banchetto and Three Strikes Family Entertainment Center

The fact it isn’t part of the FEZ proper the city is developing doesn’t matter.

It is coming here based on Manteca’s taking a long view to create synergy to develop and serve a niche at the epicenter of a perennially growing region.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com