Business View Civil & Municipal l November 2022

77 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 9 definitely draw more interest by developers because those are now improvements they don’t need to include.” The road improvements have already attracted the attention of one developer who has submitted plans for a small shopping center, and there’s also plans underway for a fast food-gas station combo and a grocery store. Gomez hopes the new construction will encourage even more development, perhaps even enticing a hotel to set up shop in the city. “It’s a great location,” she says. “There are millions of tourists that take Highway 198 each year to go up to the Sequoia National Park, so it would be a convenient location for tourists to stop at, especially since we are the last exit on the freeway portion of the state highway on the way to the park.” “Along with a hotel, it would be great to get a nice family-style restaurant there. But we also just need more businesses for our residents so that they’re not having to drive to neighboring cities for some of their shopping. I’m really hoping some national retailers will be considering Farmersville if they’re looking to expand their markets.” The city is also looking to attract more residential developers. They have a mix of housing stock at the moment, but inventory is low for family residential and multifamily housing. “We are really needing more of everything,” Gomez says. “We have room for growth, we just need developers to come here and construct it. We are definitely needing development for your middle income, single family homes to your low income housing or multi-family housing. And we could always use more development that could benefit seniors.” The city has a project in the works with Self-Help Enterprises, a nationally-recognized community development organization that helps build homes for low income families. The organization is in the process of building 108 low income housing units in town that will be completed in the next year. “They also partner with us to manage any of our government assisted home programs – people who are looking for home loans or needing loans for rehabbing their houses. They manage those grants and those loans for us. They are a huge partner of ours and they really focus on the low income residents of our community,” Gomez adds. C I TY OF FARMERSV I LLE , CAL I FORNI A