Ten Pin Bowling plans to build a family entertainment center as well as a convention/banquet facility in Manteca.

The project — consisting of two buildings flanking a 500-space parking lot — is proposed for Atherton Drive south of the 120 Bypass between Union Road and Airport Way.

To give you an idea of its size, the city’s Big League Dreams sports complex has 535 parking spaces.

Ten Pin’s plans are currently being reviewed by the city.

It is proposed for a vacant parcel stretching between the two curves on Atherton that sends the four-lane arterial alongside the 120 Bypass.

As such, the fun center and the accompanying banquet/convention center will have prominent freeway exposure.

It is the latest evidence that Manteca’s methodical pursuit of family entertainment-style businesses that e-commerce can’t replicate is working.

“It’s not just Manteca’s vision,” Manteca Mayor Gary Singh said of the drive to make the Airport Way/120 Bypass interchange the epicenter for regional family entertainment.

Ten Pin in Turlock offers 34 lanes of bowling including eight VIP lanes in conjunction with a party room, arcade-style games room, billiards, darts, laser tag, and full service restaurant.

The biggest difference with the Manteca proposal is a separate building for banquets and conferences.

Once built, travelers entering the city from the east via the 120 Bypass will be greeted with freeway views of the five-story Great Wolf Lodge — the largest hotel in the Central Valley between Redding and Bakersfield —  the Ten Pin Fun Center, and then Bass Pro Shops.

“It’s not just Manteca,” Councilman Charlie Halford said of the growing appeal to locate concerns in Manteca such as Living Spaces that opened a mega-furniture showroom just down the street from where Ten Pin wants to build.

All three concerns dovetail into a strategy adopted 17 years ago to target recreational sports and family entertainment in a bid to capitalize on Manteca’s location in the middle of two distinct “regional” markets.

The first — and the one that attracted Bass Pro, Great Wolf and BLD — is Manteca being essentially equal distance between San Jose, Sacramento, and San Francisco. There are more than 18 million consumers within a 90-minute drive of Manteca.

The second is the fact Manteca is in the heart of the fast growing Northern San Joaquin Valley triangle with Tracy/Mountain House, Modesto, and Stockton at each point.

Within a 20 to 30 minute drive in each direction, the triangle contains almost 800,000 consumers.

The foundation of the marketing strategy is Manteca-Lathrop and the fact one or the other of the two communities that are literally joined together with a shared border has been consistently among the fastest growing cities in the state for the past five years in the fastest region in California.

Last year, the two cities had a combined 1,500 plus single family home housing starts in addition to more than 400 apartment units being started.

There are also 21,000 housing units between the two cities in various stages of the development approval pipeline.

Great Wolf’s corporate leadership, when they locked into building in Manteca in 2017, noted the importance of having other family-entertainment options near their resort.

They noted at the time that draws like the municipal golf course, Delicato winery, Bass Pro Shops and Manteca Bowlero help Great Wolf book rooms.

That’s because oftentimes families won’t spend 100 percent of their time at the self-contained resort.

Also, Great Wolf executives noted the more nearby attractions, the greater potential they have for guests to be repeat visitors to the Manteca location. That’s based on the company’s success elsewhere.

Often there are multiple families that plan a stay together at their waterparks. They will include offsite things on the trip for adults to enjoy such as sampling the offerings of a local brewery, dining options that are different than those at Great Wolf, or other entrainment options such as taking in a movie at the nearby 16 screen AMC theater complex

The city has put infrastructure in place to create a family entertainment zone (FEZ) between the two anchors it has already secured — the 500-room Great Wolf indoor waterpark resort and the six softball fields /indoor soccer facility complex of Big League Dreams.

Manteca is currently working with Loma Brewing Co. that wants to open a brewery in the FEZ at the corner of Milio Candini Drive and Daniels Street.

It is unusual — especially in Northern California – for a city under 100,000 to have two bowling alleys.

Ten Pin, along with Manteca Bowlero on Yosemite Avenue, will give Manteca two locations.

Again, the built-in advantage Manteca has is its draw as a regional entertainment center and the fact the contiguous cities of Manteca and Lathrop provides an immediate market of 122,000 plus consumers.

As for banquet space and conference center, it builds open the demand that has already turned The Veranda Events Center in downtown Manteca  into such a success that after less than a year of being open for the owners are adding a second events location.

Last month, they received Manteca Planning Commission permission to convert a 24,000-square-foot furniture store on Moffat Boulevard with Highway 99 exposure into a banquet hall.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com