A new $350M casino is breaking ground off Highway 99

Central CaliforniaPress Room2021May
By Amanda Chandler Commercial • New Developments 0 Comments

A new $350M casino is breaking ground off Highway 99

The Las Vegas company behind bringing a new Native American casino to Madera County is close to breaking ground, according to a high-ranking official close to the project. The California State Supreme Court cleared the way in September for Las Vegas-based Red Rock Resorts to build North Fork Rancheria’s casino off of Highway 99 near Avenue 18 just north of Madera, less than 40 miles east of the Chukchansi Gold Resort & Casino and Table Mountain Casino.

The new casino could take about 18 months to finish once crews break ground, which is expected by the end of June, according to Stephen Cootey, chief financial officer for Red Rock. “As of now, the budget for the full completion of this project excluding any financing costs is expected to be between $350 million and $400 million,” Cootey said May 4 in a call with investors. He went on to say the project is expected to cover 213,000 square feet, including 100,000 square feet in casino space, plus 2,000 slots and 40 table games. There will also be two restaurants and a food hall. Officials with the North Fork Rancheria, home to the Mono Indians, said more on the new casino may be available in the coming month or so but declined to discuss it on Monday, according to Charles Altekruse, spokesman for the North Fork Mono.

ECONOMIC IMPACT

The success of new hospitality destinations in an area not already known to draw a large amount of tourists can be hard to predict, according to economist Jeffrey Michael from the University of the Pacific in Stockton. “That’s the tricky thing with a lot of hospitality, drawing new visitors or just diverting dollars from others nearby,” he said. But, Madera County officials are more confident of the long-term success of the new casino that’s taken nearly two decades to clear legal hurdles.

Madera’s casinos do draw tour buses of people from out of the area looking to play slots and table games, Kahn said. He added that the new casino will likely be a hot commodity when it’s first built, but shouldn’t be a long-term damper on other tourist attractions in the area. “I think it will have some affect, naturally,” he said. “I think in the long-run it will all level out.” The North Fork Rancheria of Mono Indians is a federally recognized Native American nation with more than 2,200 tribal citizens and government offices in Madera County.

https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article251299623.html

By Amanda Chandler Economy 0 Comments

The Hottest U.S. Rental Markets: Mid-sized Hubs Take the Lead in Competitivity

Following one of the most disruptive periods of our times, at the start of 2021, the most in demand locations for renters were certainly not the ones you would expect. 

When trying to assess the competitiveness of our country’s 125 largest rental markets, we found mid-sized markets like Central Valley, CA, Spokane, WA, and Boise, ID were the most sought-after this past quarter. These emerging renter hubs share a similar story, attracting renters from larger metros with a mix of cheaper, slower living and a growing number of opportunities. Coupled with a shift towards remote work, the nation’s mid-sized renter hubs were poised to get a boost in the first quarter of the year. 

“The largest markets and surrounding exurbs show renters are distinctly looking to get more square footage or more amenities for the same price, within these hubs and close to them. Residents from large gateway markets are “trading up”, and with work-from-home policies, exurb locations close to these areas are also benefitting from this behaviour.” says Doug Ressler, manager of business intelligence at Yardi Matrix. 

To rank the hottest rental markets in the nation, we looked at the most revealing industry metrics when it comes to competitivity: 

  • what percentage of apartments were occupied
  • how many days rentals were vacant   
  • how many prospective renters competed for apartments 
  • the rent price trend  

On a national level, U.S. apartments were vacant for an average of 39 days during the first quarter of 2021. 94% of rentals were occupied during the time period, with an average of 11 renters competing per apartment. The rent trend score was 20 in the first three months of the year, showing slight growth.

https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/market-snapshots/rentcafe-market-competitivity-report-april-2021/

By Amanda Chandler Commercial 0 Comments

This global company is bringing a new dessert shop to Clovis

Beard Papa’s, an international dessert shop specializing in cream puffs, plans to open its first shop in Clovis. The shop is expected to open in late summer, according to the company.

Founded in Japan, the company is keeping mum on where it will be, but real estate firm Retail California reported to The Bee’s leases section that the company has leased a spot in The Trading Post shopping center at the southeast corner of Herndon and Clovis avenues. Beard Papa’s is slated to take over the empty space next to Baskin Robbins. The shop sells cream puffs – a light French pastry filled with custard in various flavors. “All of our puffs are this golden flaky shell on the outside, with a soft, airy custard on the inside that is so amazing,” said Tucker Kaufman, head of marketing and social media.

The shop offers several types of shells of puffs, the tops dipped in the customer’s choice of glaze, like chocolate, strawberry or an Oreo topping. Customers also pick which filling they want from the menu – vanilla, chocolate or green tea custard. In addition to the standard menu flavors, Beard Papa’s also has monthly flavors like a churro cream puff with horchata filling, or a boba puff with the little round balls from boba tea inside the custard.

The cream puffs sell for around $3.40 each. A little smaller than the average person’s fist, the puffs are larger than the ones typically made by home cooks or sold in local bakeries, Kaufman said.

BEARD PAPA’S

Beard Papa’s got its name from Yuji Hirota, who opened a bakery in 1999 in Osaka. His fluffy white beard was so noticeable that he became known as “beard papa” to his customers. The company has more than 400 locations worldwide and is expanding in the United States. It has shops in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago and several other large cities. Beard Papa’s has a few other desserts on the menu, including mini cheesecakes, and drinks. But its specialty is the cream puffs. “We have this amazing cult following,” Kaufman said. “People who know us, they love us.”

The company joins others opening in the Fresno area that specialize in one dessert, like the new locations of Crumbl Cookies, Nothing Bundt Cakes and Crave Cookie, which opened its first shop with a drive-thru recently. Said Kaufman from Beard Papa’s: “It’s such a niche dessert, but we are a luxury dessert destination. It’s not like doughnuts where you find them on every street corner.”

https://www.fresnobee.com/living/food-drink/bethany-clough/article251237549.html

By Amanda Chandler New Developments 0 Comments

Stratolaunch sends the world’s biggest plane on second test flight

Stratolaunch, the aerospace company founded by the late Seattle billionaire Paul Allen, put the world’s biggest airplane through its second flight test today, two years after the first flight. “We are airborne!” Stratolaunch reported in a tweet. Today’s takeoff from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port at 7:28 a.m. PT marked the first time the plane, nicknamed Roc after the giant bird of Arabian and Persian mythology, got off the ground since Stratolaunch’s acquisition by Cerberus Capital Management in October 2019.

Roc rose as high as 14,000 feet and traveled at a top speed of 199 mph during a flight that lasted three hours and 14 minutes — which is close to an hour longer than the first flight on April 13, 2019. During that earlier flight, the airplane reached a maximum speed of 189 mph and maximum altitude of 17,000 feet.

Zachary Krevor, Stratolaunch’s chief operating officer, said today’s flight accomplished all of its test objectives by checking the performance of improved instrumentation, a more robust flight control system and an environmental control system that allowed the pilots to work in a pressurized cockpit. Krevor said the crew included chief pilot Evan Thomas, pilot Mark Giddings and flight engineer Jake Riley.

The flight’s spiciest moment came at touchdown, when one of the mammoth plane’s landing gears settled the runway while the other was still in the air. “We did touch down initially on one gear, but that’s exactly the technique we prefer to use during a crosswind landing,” Krevor told GeekWire during a post-landing teleconference. “Though we stayed within our crosswind limits, we did have a little bit of a crosswind, and the aircrew did an excellent job of bringing the aircraft down.” Since Roc’s first flight in 2019, the business model for the 10-year-old venture has shifted: In its early years, Stratolaunch focused on using Roc as a flying launch pad for sending rockets and their payloads to orbit. The concept capitalizes on the air launch system pioneered by SpaceShipOne, which won financial backing from Allen and won the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004,

The new owners still expect to use Roc for air launch, but the current focus is on using the plane as a testbed for Stratolaunch’s hypersonic flight vehicles, Once the plane is cleared for regular operations, perhaps next year, Stratolaunch could begin launching its Talon-A prototype hypersonic plane. David Millman, Stratolaunch’s chief technology officer, said the company plans to build three hypersonic vehicles. He said that should open the way for conducting hypersonic tests at least once every 17 days, matching the tempo of flights for the X-15 rocket plane in the 1960s,

Hypersonic flight at five times the speed of sound is a big deal for military applications. Russia and China are said to be working on hypersonic weapons systems, and the U.S. military is keen to keep up. Stratolaunch expects its technology to figure in the Pentagon’s plans. “That’s exactly one of the areas that we’re looking at: how can we help the Department of Defense in mitigating risks for all their extensive flight testing,” Millman told GeekWire.

Millman said Stratolaunch’s Talon testbed will be able to carry payloads, test materials and fly a variety of profiles that can help the Pentagon determine characteristics of hypersonic flight before it conducts costly full-blown flights of its own hypersonic vehicles. “What we’re doing is providing a path or them to test a lot of their technologies in a simpler way, in a repeatable way, in a useful way so that they can get to their all-up rounds much quicker,” Millman said.

Stratolaunch hasn’t ruled out eventually pursuing other applications for its launch system, including sending satellite payloads and crewed space planes into orbit. Other companies, principally including Virgin Orbit, are also working on next-generation air launch technology. Such systems hold the promise of greater versatility and quicker response time for launching payloads, due to the fact that the carrier planes can take off from a wide variety of runways, fly around inclement weather and theoretically launch their payloads in any desired orbital inclination.

Stratolaunch’s twin-fuselage, six-engine Roc airplane is in a class by itself, thanks to its world-record wingspan of 385 feet. In comparison, the wingspan of the modified Boeing 747 that Virgin Orbit is using comes to 211 feet. The previous record-holder was the Spruce Goose, a prototype seaplane that made its debut in 1947 and had a 320-foot wingspan. Built by Mojave-based Scaled Composites, Roc has the capacity to carry more than 500,000 pounds of payload.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/we-are-airborne-stratolaunch-sends-the-worlds-biggest-plane-on-second-test-flight/ar-BB1gbE3I