Mayor Gary Singh sees a Manteca that can become competitive with Tracy, Lathrop, and Stockton in the hunt for future distribution and business park jobs.

And it can do so by:

*Taking advantage of two recently upgraded  interchanges —  Lathrop Road and French Camp — on Highway 99 that are two miles apart and provide access to large parcels suitable for large business park development.

*Capitalizing on a railroad spur that runs along French Camp Road.

*Keeping truck traffic mixing with other vehicle traffic on surface streets at a minimum.

*Leveraging Manteca’s unique reginal position of being between two intermodal railroad-truck facilities — Union Pacific on Roth Road and Santa Fe at Jack Tone and Austin roads — that count for the highest movement of cross country goods.

*Make use of an existing SJAA route — a designation that accommodates longer trucks that the federal government allows to use the Interstate freeway system than what California typically allows.

*Using north Manteca’s close proximity to Stockton Metro Airport — just over two miles from Roth Road and Airport Way — as a drawing card for concerns relying on cargo freight or ease of executive travel.

Singh noted the general plan update adopted by the City Council in July — and now in abeyance until a referendum that was successfully pushed via  a voter signature drive launched by Delicato Vineyards is settled next year on whether to go forward with it— implements a good portion of that vision.

As such, it reduces the ultimate number of homes in Manteca’s planning area by shifting more land to industrial uses.

The mayor, though, believes Manteca can go a step further and put in place strategies that allows it to rely on the advantages of its location as well as the fairly ease to make large parcels suitable for distribution bemouths like Amazon, Wayfair, and others available to business park developers to move fairly quickly to develop.

That includes land use tweaks to the adopted general plan that is now on hold.

“We can get truck traffic to the freeway without going through residential and commercial areas,” Singh said.

It would involve redesignating some land inside the city’s sphere of influence — areas with a high probability of being  annexed in a relative short-time frame for development  — to connect land already designated for industrial, development along the Airport Way corridor to land in the city’s general planning area that is envisioned for business park development abutting the French Camp Road to the south.

When taken in  total with land southeast of the French Camp Road and Highway 99 interchange, it would add upwards of 1,800 acres of essentially contiguous land that could be used for industrial purposes.

That would be a significant increase from the 93.9 acres Manteca currently has available for such use.

It would also put Manteca on par with Tracy’s available industrial land even after its expanded by annexations now being proposed.

Singh believes North Manteca — if done right to take advantage of its unique pluses — could emerge as the premier area for business park development in the region.

And it can be done in a manner that keeps big truck traffic conflicts at a minimum on surface streets with vehicles by how the city proceeds with the future alignment of Roth Road toward Highway 99.

Singh initially sees Roth Road as development occurs as a simple an overpass with no ramps across the Highway 99 freeway.

That said, he favors as development occurs that the city requires a set aside for potential land for ramps if and when the need for them arises.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com