Three new warehouse buildings got the green light from the Lathrop Planning Commission last week – only further adding to the explosive growth that the city has seen over the past several years.

The commission voted 4-0 – with Gloryanna Rhodes absent – to allow the applicant to subdivide an existing parcel off Lathrop Road near the Manteca city limits  into four individual parcels and construct three warehouse buildings for a total of 191,160 feet of new building space.

A general plan amendment that was approved by the commission will rezone the 18.20-acre parcel near the city’s easterly border from service commercial to general industrial to fit the use proposed by the applicant.

That parcel will be divided into four individual lots – a 6.54-acre parcel for Building 1, a 5.58-acre parcel for Building 2, a 3.50-acre parcel for Building 3, and a 2.58-acre parcel that is not currently planned for development – and will house a trio of buildings ranging in size from 78,400 square feet down to 42,560 square feet.

The buildings are small compared to the massive footprints seen in other industrial developments currently underway – the city has one 1.2 million square foot building already constructed, and others similar in size in the works – but will add industrial square footage that can easily be accessed from Airport Way.

Because of Lathrop’s location along I-5 and the Highway 120 Bypass used to access Highway 99 – and the availability of land – the city has become a hotspot for light industrial warehouse construction.

South San Joaquin County – comprised to Manteca, Ripon, Lathrop, Tracy, and Mountain House – remains one of the fastest-growing areas in the state with Lathrop reading the way.

According to 2020 census data, Lathrop grew by nearly 60 percent in the 10 years between the national survey, and extensive growth in the East Bay Area (Dublin grew by nearly 58 percent while Rio Vista grew by nearly 36 percent) has made the city a perfect location for providing goods to the most populous state in the country.

The location along I-5 means that trucks that are departing Lathrop are within 90 minutes from more than 10 million residents – more than one-fourth of California’s overall population – and in an ideal spot to access the remainder of The Golden State and the Western United States as a whole.

And after the Lathrop City Council barred trucks from driving on the portion of Lathrop Road that runs from Harlan Road to McKinley Avenue, the trucks accessing these new buildings will have to get to their location along Lathrop Road a different way – even though local deliveries to businesses in the area between those two points are allowed, the location is outside of that area and therefore it will be against the law for trucks to access the site from I-5.

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.