The building that once housed Manteca’s largest private sector employer and has sat vacant for almost 25 years is being proposed for a major remodel.

Plans to rehab the 93,193-square-foot building at 400 Industrial Park Drive, add an auxiliary dwelling unit, and upgrade the landscape were submitted to the city for review in December.

Other commercial projects submitted during the last two months of 2024 include:

*Plans for an indoor kid play area business in a restored structure at 792 West Yosemite that last housed a danced studio before being damaged by fire.

*Placing a solar canopy over part of the parking lot at the small commercial plaza on the southeast corner of Crestwood Avenue and Lathrop Road where an AM/PM convenience store and Arco station  are located.

*A new office building on the Crossroads Grace Community Church, 1505 Moffat Blvd.

*Expansion of the Prologis warehouse on Phoenix Drive that houses the Ford small parts distribution for the West Coast.

The property at 400 Industrial Park Drive is now owned by the Zacharia Family High Basis limited partnership based in Tracy.

They have obtained Central Valley Construction to remodel the building classified as a warehouse.

It opened in 1980 as the then largest building in the Manteca Industrial Park that had just broken ground.

It initially housed Indy Electronics that peaked at 750 employees that still stands as a record number of jobs ever provided by a private sector entity in Manteca.

The firm assembled electronic components around the clock in three shifts.

Almost all the jobs were minimum wage or just above with the overwhelming number of employees living in Stockton.

When its clients opted for cheaper labor in Mexico, Indy Electronics closed.

Similar ventures — Alphatec and then Silicon Turnkey Solutions — took over the facility for a slightly more automated version of what Indy did requiring less employees which in turn lowered costs to make it competitive with options in Mexico.

But then low-skill tech jobs were being lost to Asia where labor costs were even lower than in the United States and even Mexico.

The two-story building in the Manteca Industrial Park on the southeast corner of Industrial Park Drive and Mellon Avenue  was vandalized over the years after being shuttered in the mid-1990s.

The homeless stripped the interior of the high amount of copper wiring in place due to the electronics manufacturing and assembly process.

In one year alone, the losses were pegged at $500,000. 

The structure itself wasn’t damaged but walls and false ceilings were gutted.

It was also the site of a homeless man dying after he tried to break in through a skylight and fell two floors to his death. 

In 2016,  the city approved plans to convert the first floor into climate controlled storage units ranging from 5 by 10 feet to 10 by 20 feet in size. 

The inside was proposed to accommodate three dozen vehicles and/or boats in a temperature controlled environment.

There also would have been exterior vehicle storage with 64 stalls. 

The second floor was to have included seven small offices and two bathrooms as well as an 1,800-square-foot caretaker’s residence.

The project never got off the ground after it was approved.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com