There will not be a referendum on Manteca’s growth plan for the next 20 years on the Nov. 5 ballot.
Delicato Family Wines — that collected 7,429 signatures of registered city voters to qualify a measure to toss out the general plan update a year ago this month — has opted to drop the referendum.
That said, a lawsuit against the city seeking the same result is still moving forward.
The world’s largest winery apparently deemed city actions implementing an agreement hammered out in November 2023 with Mayor Gary Singh and then Vice Mayor Mike Moiroiwt that was subsequently ratified by the entire council demonstrated adequate good faith to drop the ballot measure.
They do still have a legal backstop in place with a lawsuit in San Joaquin County Superior court.
The lawsuit will go away when Manteca completes the terms of the agreement.
Among those is the city acquiring at least 50 acres for a community park on the southeast corner of the Union Road and Lovelace Road intersection in north Manteca to serve as a buffer to protect the winery from future residential growth.
The city has $9 million in growth fees collected for community parks that would more than cover the cost of buying the land.
Once the city buys the land, it would likely become the leading site for an aquatics center of Manteca opts to pursue one.
Singh and Morowit — along with Delicato Family Wines CEO Chris Indelicato and chief operating officer Jay Indelicato — hammered out the following agrement:
*There will be no residential developments north of Lovelace Road.
*Housing development will not occur east of Union Road at a point beyond where the northern edge of the Del Webb at Woodbridge community.
*Delicato will provide up to 12 acres at no cost for an extension of Roth Road through their property so it can reach Frontage Road on the west side of Highway 99.
*The Roth Road extension through Delicato property will have a continuous sound wall on the northside — save for access gates for farm equipment — to provide a sound and visual barrier of winery operations. It will include a red stop light at one point to allow Delicato agricultural equipment to move between farmland the road extension will cut through.
*Existing plans for housing submitted to the city for consideration will be held in abeyance in terms of processing until general plan changes agreed upon regarding zoning changes are officially implemented.
*As such, that means the amount of housing Manteca will allow in the area will be reduced including the elimination of apartments.
*Land to the west and south of the winery will be placed in an agricultural zone. Land between Union Road and Airport Way farther to the west of the winery was already zoned for industrial use in the general plan update as well as land to the east of the winery on the other side of Highway 99.
*The winery operation per se will be in an agricultural industrial zone.
*The area once envisioned by developers for housing on the east side of Union Road north of Del Webb will instead have a 50-acre community park site plus industrial zoning.
*The park site that borders Union Road is designed with a corridor that connects with a future extension of the Tidewater Bikeway. That means both of the city’s community parks — Woodward is the other — will be accessed directly by city’s separated bike trail system.
*The park’s design with the connection to the Tidewater could allow it to be ultimately doubled in size of industrial land to the east of it doesn’t develop.
*Delicato will pay $50,000 toward the initial design of the community park.
*The cost of Roth Road improvements will be determined and developers will establish funding for it before residential and industrial park growth occurs.
*Delicato, would drop the referendum on the general plan providing all of the milestones outlined in the settlement agreement are met 88 days before the election.
Roth Road extension deal sets
tone for north Manteca growth
& reducing truck traffic elsewhere
The zoning changes are critical to what Delicato believes it needs to protect the future viability of its winery they have parlayed into the world’s fifth largest partially on the strength of a recent investments in excess of $100 million.
Roth Road deal is a linchpin for a city plan to eliminate the need for Airport Way ever to become a truck route in order to push aggressively for industrial job development in north Manteca.
Being able to get trucks to the area will allow Manteca to capitalize on an advantage that Tracy doesn’t have — being virtually next door to the Union Pacific intermodal facility plus having Stockton Metro Airport and the Sante Fe Railroad intermodal at the end of Austin Road close by.
Roth Road — if it were extended in a straight line from where it T-intersects with Union Road today — would run just to the north of Delicato’s massive bottling and warehouse building,.
The proposed route curves it south to the point it T-intersects with the Frontage Road by Highway 99 a mile to the north of Lathrop Road and a mile to the south of French Camp Road. That is key since that is the minimal distance Caltrans will allow being interchanges if Manteca decides to build one eventually at that location.
T-intersecting with Frontage Road would connect it with an established STAA route — a requirement for the longest truck trailers to be allowed to use a road.
As such, trucks could use Roth Road from the Airport Way corridor to reach either Interstate 5 to the west or Highway 99 to the east via the Frontage Road and the Lathrop Road interchange.
The interchange at Lathrop Road already meets STAA standards.
The city currently only plans to T-intersect Roth Road with Frontage Road.
The plan is allowed for the possibility one day to bridge Highway 99 so Roth Road can continue to the east.
In doing so, it would cut through the southern part of an area identified for future industrial park use as well as housing further to the south and further to the east toward Prescott Road.
The city also eventually could add ramps to make the Roth Road overcrossing into an interchange if the need comes up and development occurs to fund it.
With that in mind, both sides of where Roth would initially T-intersect with Frontage Road with be zoned commercial.
That would allow for a truck stop and highway commercial such as hotels and restaurants.
The Roth Road solution coupled with efforts by the city to get intermodal access for trucks to Lathrop Road eventually would dovetail a strategy to eliminate truck traffic as much as possible from the Airport Way corridor as well as reduce it passing through Lathrop.
Such an extension would allow truck traffic to reach freeways via McKinley Avenue and the new 120 Bypass interchange.
Besides opening up north Manteca to industrial park development, it would do the same for the McKinley Avenue area in Lathrop north of West Yosemite Avenue.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
