Business View Magazine | August 2019

255 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE AUGUST 2019 MANTECA , CAL I FORNI A own city. We hadn’t adequately planned into the future to make sure that we have shovel-ready sites available with road networks and other infrastructure so that companies who might be interested could consider us. That’s what we’ve done, recently, with our General Plan update. Previously, it was ‘Let’s see how many more housing lots we could build.’ We have 7,000 lots in inventory right now, and we are building more than 500 homes per year. That is more than 10 years’ worth of inventory. We don’t need any more housing lots. We need a place for those residents to be able to work close to home and still be connected to this Silicon Valley engine of commerce that is driving the whole region.” Manteca’s traditional workforce profile has not been a cadre of tech workers; they have been more a variety of associate degree level, some college. For them, San Joaquin County can be seen as a regional economy with a relatively short commuting distance to work in, say, Stockton. But this is a new and different cohort of workers the city is encountering and, for those folks, there are not currently jobs they could compete for, and for the most part, they don’t exist in the county. “We have also been speaking to these residents that are part of the community now, who have made this choice, realizing it’s a bit of a deal with the devil, because they’re just not happy,” Smail remarks. “This is a big personal challenge, to put that kind of time into this mega-commute. We’d like to get ahead of it and have a solution in play before things get to the point where it’s gridlock and mission- critical, and we think we could do that. “We had one case of a 233-acre residential development that was supposed to be right up against the Union Pacific Freight rail tracks. We’ve been able to make the argument and business case that if you look at property on either side of the tracks for about two miles, it’s all industrial and commercial except for this one 750-home development. So we were able to attract a developer to bring that one into the industrial column. That’s the point - if we’ve already got 7,000 other lots located away from industrial uses, do we really need to squeeze in more houses next to train tracks and, if we do, who’s going to buy them? “Tesla recently acquired a facility in the adjacent city of Lathrop, maybe two miles from our border. While it’s not in the city of Manteca, we think it’s a net benefit because they bought a former Daimler- Benz-Chrysler building that had never been occupied and filled it rather quickly. They are now expanding even more, onsite, and a lot of those workers live in Manteca and Lathrop. Now their job is 15 minutes from home instead of 2 hours.” “For those who don’t deal with this every day it seems a failure. ‘Gee, we didn’t get that deal. Tesla went to Lathrop. Why can’t we get that?’ Well, Tesla went to Lathrop because they had a building that was available and a site that was ready to go. Tesla could move into the building, make some minor improvements, and be ready in 120 days. These companies are moving so fast and are so agile that they’re looking for the right site and the right building. The actual community location can become important but only after the site meets all other site selection criteria. “We as City staff are more focused on that location choice because it is a reflection of our local community, civic pride, job creation, investment, how we’re paid, etc. But for all practical purposes, within our regional economy, we’re one of a cluster of cities in South San Joaquin County that has available sites and a variety of choices. We want to get prospects interested in our area as a whole. We are happy to compete with our neighboring cities to offer the best location for a given prospect.” “Tesla making that investment was a huge leap of faith, in my view, and a proof-of-concept that this is legit. We use them as an advertising and marketing component: ‘Look what Tesla discovered! Look what Amazon discovered with the investment they made in Tracy, Manteca, and Stockton!’ They are early adopters and have fully understood that this is part of their growth. If they don’t find a better place to obtain space at affordable rates, they won’t be able to compete and grow. “We also need to be able to have space that