Cookie cutter “revived” valley downtowns are a dime a dozen.

But when it comes to Manteca, the mold being used to shape the future is about to be broken.

The mold, of course, is the one that makes revitalized downtowns supposedly unique by taking the same carbon copy approach as everyone else.

Downtowns are “saved” by making them the “in place” for dining and specialty shops that have heavy appeal to specific demographics according to downtown planning gurus.

That demographic? The young and the restless, with money.

The problem with that is two-fold in Manteca.

For starters, there are definitely a lot of blue collars here.

And the rising rank of white collars are somewhat laser focused on raising families,

It is why the new home stampede is in Manteca and not Pleasanton.

As such what will work in Manteca isn’t the same as in a college town like Turlock or an “older” valley town like Lodi where the median age is 41.7 years compared to 36.9 years in the Family City.

There are also three indisputable facts that make downtown Manteca unique in the Northern San Joaquin Valley and arguably as far as most of the Bay Area is concerned.

*Downtown is still at the geographic heart of Manteca with two thriving commercial aerials crossing at its heart.

*The coming ACE train service in 2025.

*The other is the central district is anything but dead.

There are seven financial institutions.

There are three small grocery stores.

There are restaurants, professional services, and specialty stores that service niche Manteca needs as opposed to what some consultant thinks will work.

It a commercial that plays well to Manteca embracing the Family City moniker as well as is wealth of ethnic diversity.

But more importantly, there are — depending upon how you count them — five or seven gathering places.

They include two social halls apiece operated by the Manteca Ripon Pentecost Society and the Festa do Espírito Santo de Manteca plus the Manteca Transit community room and Legion Hall.

The 900-pound gorilla that everyone seems to overlook is the lavish and well received The Veranda Event Center that is the third act of the El Rey Theatre.

Downtown is, and always has been, a community gathering place. The Veranda has taken it to a new regional level.

Passenger rail service is an added ingredient that, over time, can serve as a catalyst for redevelopment of nearby neighborhoods with higher density housing.

In short, it could allow Manteca to create a quasi-transit village/downtown.

The first part of the puzzle are a pair of affordable housing projects the city is pursuing.

*A 5-story, 42-unit low-income senior complex with commercial on the ground floor at Yosemite and Sycamore avenues in downtown.

*A 192-unit affordable apartment complex with commercial on the first floor in the 600 block of South Main just south of downtown in the central district.

Adding more daytime customers and 24/7 residents will improve downtown’s economic vitality.

At the same time, a plan being advanced by Mayor Gary Singh and others could expand the downtown easel for private sector investments as well as create a long-term improvement to traffic flow through downtown.

Singh and others get what the know-it-all downtown consultants never do.

It is not an either or question when it comes to whether traffic should flow through downtown as efficiently as possible or if every effort should be made to impede pass through traffic to encourage people to stop.

Manteca can —and should — have both.

And it won’t require massive eminent domain and tearing down parts of neighborhoods to get a downtown bypass in place as Livermore did.

It involves extending Moffat Boulevard west of Main Street behind the 100 and 200 blocks of West Yosemite Avenue and then connecting with Yosemite Avenue.

Through traffic would bypass downtown via Moffat.

Moffat serves as a connector to existing and future southeast neighborhoods south of the 120 Bypass.

It also connects with Spreckels Avenue that ties into the Target-Home Depot-Food-4-Less commercial area.

Moffat is wide enough from Main to just beyond Powers Avenue to accommodate four travel lanes. It can easily be widened the rest of the way to Spreckels Avenue.

That means Yosemite Avenue between Library Park and Fremont Avenue could be re-imagined.

There are a lot of scenarios that could make Yosemite Avenue more viable.

The changes would do anything but encourages through traffic.

The possibilities include one way traffic with one or two lanes, shifting the travel lanes to one side to accommodate a promenade, diagonal parking in the middle and travel lanes along the curb, plus wider sidewalks for outdoor dining/mini plazas among other scenarios.

Traffic heading east on Yosemite could flow seamlessly onto Moffat.

Traffic heading west on Yosemite seeking to reach the Main Street or Union Road corridors could flow seamlessly to Center Street via Fremont Avenue.

Center Street — like Moffat Boulevard — doesn’t have the width limitations like Yosemite Avenue does through the central district.

The businesses on the south side of the 100 and 200 blocks on the south side of West Yosemite could orientate a second entrance from underutilized municipal parking lots that would be accessible from the extension of Moffat Boulevard.

The city’s effort to secure downtown housing for seniors could become the tipping point for downtown to grow.

It could take downtown’s well-established track record as a community gathering place to new levels.

And if it does, the envisioned 42-unit senior apartment complex could become a transformative milestone for Manteca just as four other endeavors the city had their hand in: Turning a shuttered sugar beet processing plant into Spreckels Park. Bass Pro, Great Wolf, and Big League Dreams.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com