An update on the $180 million Great Wolf Lodge project that when it opens will become Manteca’s biggest source of municipal tax revenue and the city’s second largest private employer will be provided during a community meeting on Thursday, July 11.
Great Wolf representatives will be in attendance at the 6 p.m. gathering at the Civic Center council chambers, 1001 W. Center St., to provide the community a status report. It will touch on employee recruitment information, important milestone dates, as well as new features being offered at resort.
The resort is expected to open sometime in mid-2020. When it does it will be the largest year-round tourist attraction in the Northern San Joaquin Valley.
The project includes a 500-room hotel that will be the largest in the Central Valley that stretches from Redding to Bakersfield. It will also include a 51,000-square-foot family entertainment center/lobby, 12,000 square feet of meeting rooms, a 16,000-square-foot restaurant/ food court, and a 100,000-square-foot indoor water park.
The overall complex is 510,000 square feet. That will make it the largest non-distribution center building in Manteca in terms of floor space. It will be just over three times the size of the 140,000-square-foot Costco store next door that is currently the largest.
Great Wolf also has an option on additional land for a possible future expansion.
Great Wolf will provide 500 jobs with about half expected to be fulltime positions and the rest part-time jobs that will also encompass youth employment opportunities.
The city was able to attract Great Wolf after investing a decade in preparing the site to land the marquee development project on 30 acres that the city owned west of Costco and along the 120 Bypass. The goal was to give Manteca a unique economic niche in the Northern California Metroplex with 18 million consumers in an area that stretches from San Jose to Sacramento.
It is being used as the linchpin to develop another 100 acres the city owns as a family entertainment zone (FEZ) as well as boost development near the Airport Way and Daniels Street intersection. The city is designing the FEZ to build on the synergy of both Great Wolf and the Big League Dreams sports complex that is also considering adding two more baseball fields.
Great Wolf anticipates drawing 500,000 guests a year in addition to the 400,000 paying spectators that pass through the gates of BLD.
More than $2 million a year as the city’s share of room taxes is expected to flow into the municipal general fund annually for the first 10 years with that amount increasing until 100 percent of the room taxes go to the city after 25 years.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
