Manteca’s emergency shelter and future navigation center will stay at 555 Industrial Park Drive.

Two major decisions this past week — a far reaching agreement with the Manteca Unified School District and a decision to site the new police station at 680 South Main — opens the door for the city to buy the 555 Industrial Park Drive site.

Originally, the city has proposed using a $16 million state grant to build a new navigation center on the back half of the property at 680 South Main along with transitional housing.

The front half had been proposed for an affordable housing project.

“We have homeless services established at 555 Industrial,” noted City Manager Toni Lundgren.

By month’s ended an additional portable will bring the number of men’s beds to 50 and women’s beds to 25.

Mayor Garry Singh noted it would be more cost effective to repurpose an existing structure for services and to expand on modular facilities in the parking lot.

The secured site also has a kitchen/dining room and day room.

There have also been eight “box” houses fashioned from truck trailers donated for transitional housing.

The deal with the school district means Manteca Unified will no longer pursue 555 Industrial for district warehouses.

In doing so, the city also will not require to make the school district whole when the RDA property is sold the city.

If the site has a market value of $3 million, the MUSD’s share of the sales proceeds would have been $1.5 million.

The city is also receiving an acre of the 22-acre school site at Yukon Territory and Atherton Drive for Manteca’s sixth fire station.

In exchange, most of the fees for water and sewer systems for the modernization of East Union and Manteca High will be covered.

The city will also take cover some infrastructure costs associated with making it possible for the school district to build new elementary schools at Tinnin Road as well as the school site known as Tara Park.

The city also will pick up the bulk, if not all, of the costs of street upgrades required by a district decision to relocate the bus drop off zone at Cowell School to a side street to enhance traffic and pedestrian safety.

The bottom line is City of Manteca taxpayers and Manteca Unified taxpayers will avoid costs.

It means the fire station can be built for less, Measure A school bonds can be stretched to do more work, the city will be able to reduce costs related to homeless facilities, and MUSD community facilities district funding for two new elementary schools will be stretched further.

The district earlier this year had addressed their pressing need by purchasing the former Ecologic Packaging firm building in the Manteca Industrial Park.

it will provide dry and refrigerated storage for MUSD Nutritional Services.

Besides housing food service offices as well, it will be the site of a central kitchen serving multiple schools.

The district had wanted the property at 555 Industrial for its food services warehouse and had pursued the purchase for more than four years.

MUSD was still interested in 555 Industrial after buying the Ecologic building.

The reasons were two-fold. The district could centralize all of its warehouses in one location and avoid the potential of having to build additional warehouse space or lease it in the future.

By buying the Ecologic building, the distinct will no longer be paying $400,000 annually to lease space plus has room to grow.

The agreement benefited both the city and school district as well as taxpayers that support both entities.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com