Ben Moore’s mom affectionately nicknamed him “Big Ugly,” but that nickname came well before his business The Ugly Company.
The Ugly Company saves unsellable fruit from being tossed out and repurposes it into dried fruit snacks. Last year The Ugly Company saved and repurposed nearly 2.1 million pounds of food waste.
Moore and his Chief Brand Officer Matt Gorells joined the show with some samples of their ugly fruit and what their plans are for the future.
California rental housing investment returns may lag behind the rest of the country, but Central Valley cities have the biggest gains in the state. Zillow data show rent in Madera will pay back a 20% down payment — the typical amount needed for a rental property — faster than anywhere else in the state. Real estate website Agent Advice compiled the data.
At an average rent of $2,195 a month, .57% of the average home value, it only takes 36 months to pay off the down payment, four months shorter than the national average of 40 months. The state average to pay back a down payment is 50 months, due in large part to very high average property values, the report stated.
Hanford, Visalia, Fresno, and Bakersfield round out the top five, in that order.
Madera’s year-over-year rental rate increases far outpace the other four cities. Zillow’s rent index — which includes apartments — shows rents growing 17.4% to $1,997 a month in May. Rent hikes in the other four cities hovered around 5%.
Population growth in Madera falls behind other cities in the ranking. Of the top five, Bakersfield has undergone the biggest population boom over the past five years, growing 6.15% to 408,373 as of Jan. 1, according to the California Department of Finance. Madera only grew 1.7% to 65,540 people. Visalia has grown 5.37%, with a population of 143,031 people.
For landlords competing with housing affordability, Madera County has one of the highest housing affordability ratings in the Central Valley. Approximately 54% of households can afford an entry-level home in the county, according to the California Association of Realtors. Tulare and Kings counties have slightly higher shares with 55% of households able to afford an entry-level home.
The state affordability average is 36%.
The class of 2023 has made it pretty clear that they are ready and willing to move for job opportunities — and the destination doesn’t have to be a metropolis like New York City or Los Angeles. Zillow revealed exclusively to CNBC Make it, the marketplace’s 2023 ranking of the best places in the U.S. for recent college graduates.
“Navigating rent affordability can pose challenges for recent graduates entering the housing market, especially if they are doing it for the first time,” Nicole Bachaud, Zillow senior economist, tells CNBC Make It.
“It is important for these graduates to remain mindful of impending student loan repayments that will soon come into play, which will factor into the budgets of many and may impact housing decisions.”
Zillow’s report found that the second-largest markets across the U.S. can offer college graduates a higher quality of life and an accessible cost of living.
Colorado Springs, Colorado, ranked no. 1 on Zillow’s list of the best U.S. cities for recent college graduates. The Zillow Observed Rent Index found that the average rent in the Colorado city is $1,824, compared to $2,031 in Denver, about 90 minutes away. The study found that the average salary for a recent college grad in Colorado Springs is $63,190—which means the rent ratio is 35%. Colorado Springs is home to the University of Colorado: Colorado Springs, and Colorado College, both places that offer employment opportunities to their own recent grads and graduates of nearby colleges like Pikes Peak Community College.
Spokane, Washington, ranks second on the list. The average rent in Spokane is $1,563, compared to Seattle, where it’s $2,223, according to Zillow. And the average salary in the city is $61,162 making the rent-to-income ratio 31%. Like Colorado Springs, Spokane, Washington, is the second-largest city in its state. During the pandemic Spokane saw a rise in remote job postings and has been able to maintain that rate, specifically in areas of technical services, health care, social assistance, finance and insurance.
Rounding out the top three is Des Moines, Iowa. The city is a hub for recent college grads looking to get into the insurance and financial services sector. Some major companies with a significant presence in Des Moines include Wells Fargo and UPS. According to Zillow, the typical rent is $1,202, while the average salary for recent college grads is $59,697. The rent-to-income ratio in Des Moines is 24%, which is less than a quarter of the average salary for 2023 college graduates, $59,600, according to The National Center for Education Statistics. “With strong job growth and affordable rents, Des Moines becomes an attractive city for recent grads to build their careers and enjoy a comfortable lifestyle,” Emily McDonald, Zillow rental trends expert, tells CNBC Make It.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/24/top-10-best-cities-for-new-graduates-zillow-report.html
A new solar energy project combining almost 2 million photovoltaic arrays with more than 120,000 batteries has become the largest installation of its kind in Kern County. The $2 billion Edwards Sanborn Solar and Energy Storage Project, 57 percent of which is located on the northwest corner of Edwards Air Force Base, began generating 807 megawatts of electricity late last year for clients including every Starbucks location in Southern California. A ribbon-cutting took place last week at the military base east of Rosamond.
When the project’s energy storage component comes fully online later this year, it will be capable of delivering 3,287 megawatt-hours for a total interconnection capacity of 1,300 megawatts, according to the project’s New York-based developer, Terra-Gen Inc. The project stands out as the biggest in a county known for its extensive solar-power assets. The second-largest, according to Director Lorelei Oviatt of the Kern County Planning and Natural Resources Department, is the battery-less Berkshire Hathaway Energy Solar Star straddling Kern and Los Angeles counties.
“Only in America, can we take barren land, embrace the power of the sun and create an engineering marvel,” Brig. Gen. William Kale, Air Force Civil Engineer Center commander, said in a news release. “So, take the time to reflect, see the great work that was done and understand the significance of this project and what it can lead to. Hopefully, this is just the spark.”
The military base will not receive power from the project, but it will benefit from added power-grid resiliency expected to reduce the area’s risk of blackouts of brownouts, said Vice President Simon Day, head of solar development for Terra-Gen.
The U.S. Air Force will also receive almost $76 million in lease revenue after signing in November 2018 what’s known as an enhanced-use lease covering 2,600 acres classified as under-utilized at the base. The project’s other 2,000 acres are situated on land owned by Terra-Gen north of the base.
Day said that, during the 35-year term of the lease, the project will pay $135 million in property taxes. That does not include $22 million in sales taxes paid to Kern County or $11 million in sales taxes paid to the state.
Not all of the 17 entities receiving energy from the project have been disclosed. But besides Starbucks, Day said, buyers include a well-known grocery store chain, the city of San Jose, Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and the Clean Power Alliance, which provides renewable energy to customers in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
Construction on the project employed 890 union workers paid wages totaling $315 million during a period of about two years, Day said. He noted that not one reportable safety incident took place during the more than 1 million construction hours involved.
6-27-23 Madera, CA Madera behavioral health center opens its doors – The Business Journal
River Vista Behavioral Health hosted a ribbon cutting for its new 128-bed behavioral health facility located at 40886 Goodwin Way, Madera, CA 93636.
In collaboration with Valley Children’s Healthcare, the 81,600 square feet, state-of-the-art facility has 128 behavioral health hospital beds, with 24 beds dedicated for children ages 5-17. The facility will also feature an indoor gymnasium and outdoor wellness courtyards for recreation.
Mental health needs in California have increased year over year with limited resources for those in need of extensive, inpatient care. The hope is that this center will help bridge that gap in the San Joaquin Valley.
River Vista Behavioral Health will offer behavioral health assessments 24 hours a day at no cost, and will provide inpatient psychiatric treatment for adults. Eventually, the facility will offer a full continuum of behavioral health services for children, adolescents, adults and older adults, including programs to meet the unique needs of the patient population.
Serving patients experiencing depression, anxiety, bipolar disorders, as well as schizophrenia and other behavioral health issues including co-occuring mental health and substance abuse.
The initial opening of the facility on June 26 will be limited to 10 beds until the facility receives accreditation by The Joint Commission. By the fall, the center will open up the beds for children.
Kern’s logistics boom is reaching into the city of Bakersfield with an industrial park proposed at the southwest corner of Mount Vernon Avenue and East Belle Terrace. With two of three buildings measuring more than 1 million square feet, the project is being marketed as having convenient access to a large workforce — and in that respect, at least, it may beat larger competitors in Shafter and the Mettler area.
“I would say that’s what makes this project advantageous,” said Director Scott Reynolds at Cushman & Wakefield, which is marketing the property on behalf of an owner-developer partnership in Southern California. “It’s surrounded by working population.”
Named 58 Logistics Center because of its close access to Highway 58, the project may be the first of its kind located within Bakersfield’s borders. A similar project is underway near Meadows Field Airport, but it lies within unincorporated Kern County territory in Oildale. The 128-acre property is modest in size, compared with other, much larger logistics centers along 7th Standard Road in Shafter and Interstate 5 in the Mettler area. Another distinction is that the project is strictly build-to-suit, whereas others recently have moved forward with speculative construction — successfully — even before signing tenants.
Since kicking off marketing of the property a few months ago, Reynolds said brokers on the project have received “a lot of interest” from potential tenants, even as no leases have been signed. He noted distribution centers that otherwise would have been located in the Inland Empire have begun coming instead to Kern County, where prices are roughly half what’s being charged for industrial property in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
The broker who assisted in the property’s November 2021 sale to its current owners, Jack Lees, said he received a lot of calls from potential buyers who wanted to “set up truck depots and that sort of stuff.” He called it a good location for such operations.
“That should be a good project for somebody,” he said.
Bakersfield City Councilman Eric Arias, whose Ward 1 encompasses the project, did not respond to a request for comment Monday. A marketing brochure put out Monday says the largest of three buildings proposed at the site would measure 1.1 million square feet and have 196 dock doors, 590 trailer stalls, parking for 510 automobiles and 40-foot clearance height.
Another building planned for the property would measure a little more than 1 million square feet, with 182 dock doors, 430 trailer stalls, 394 spaces for automobiles and 40-foot clearance, according to the brochure.
The third building, at 128,000 square feet at the property’s northeast corner, is planned to have 16 dock doors, 22 trailer stalls, 130 auto parking spaces and 36-foot clearance height. The entire property is zoned for general manufacturing and general industrial uses.
Cushman & Wakefield’s brochure points out the same kind of assets industrial properties have touted for years: convenient access to major transportation corridors and railroads, four hours from the Bay Area and the Mexican border, a “business friendly” permitting environment and relatively low taxes and labor costs. “58 Logistics Center,” the brochure states, “gives fulfillment (distribution and logistics) businesses efficient access to more consumers and end users than any other site in Southern California.”
A new solar energy project combining almost 2 million photovoltaic arrays with more than 120,000 batteries has become the largest installation of its kind in Kern County. The $2 billion Edwards Sanborn Solar and Energy Storage Project, 57 percent of which is located on the northwest corner of Edwards Air Force Base, began generating 807 megawatts of electricity late last year for clients including every Starbucks location in Southern California. A ribbon-cutting took place last week at the military base east of Rosamond.
When the project’s energy storage component comes fully online later this year, it will be capable of delivering 3,287 megawatt-hours for a total interconnection capacity of 1,300 megawatts, according to the project’s New York-based developer, Terra-Gen Inc. The project stands out as the biggest in a county known for its extensive solar-power assets. The second-largest, according to Director Lorelei Oviatt of the Kern County Planning and Natural Resources Department, is the battery-less Berkshire Hathaway Energy Solar Star straddling Kern and Los Angeles counties.
“Only in America, can we take barren land, embrace the power of the sun and create an engineering marvel,” Brig. Gen. William Kale, Air Force Civil Engineer Center commander, said in a news release. “So, take the time to reflect, see the great work that was done and understand the significance of this project and what it can lead to. Hopefully, this is just the spark.”
The military base will not receive power from the project, but it will benefit from added power-grid resiliency expected to reduce the area’s risk of blackouts of brownouts, said Vice President Simon Day, head of solar development for Terra-Gen. The U.S. Air Force will also receive almost $76 million in lease revenue after signing in November 2018 what’s known as an enhanced-use lease covering 2,600 acres classified as under-utilized at the base. The project’s other 2,000 acres are situated on land owned by Terra-Gen north of the base.
Day said that, during the 35-year term of the lease, the project will pay $135 million in property taxes. That does not include $22 million in sales taxes paid to Kern County or $11 million in sales taxes paid to the state.
Not all of the 17 entities receiving energy from the project have been disclosed. But besides Starbucks, Day said, buyers include a well-known grocery store chain, the city of San Jose, Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and the Clean Power Alliance, which provides renewable energy to customers in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
Construction on the project employed 890 union workers paid wages totaling $315 million during a period of about two years, Day said. He noted that not one reportable safety incident took place during the more than 1 million construction hours involved. He noted Terra-Gen has almost three dozen operations and maintenance staff stationed in Mojave.
Paying property taxes is no picnic, but according to a new analysis, Central Valley residents receive the best value for their tax dollars in all of California. Financial information firm SmartAsset first calculated changes in property tax rates per capita. It also tracked school district rankings and home value growth for 2022 over a five-year period. It formed an overall index of all those factors to determine where property tax revenue is most effectively spent in the Golden State.
No. 1 was Kings County with an overall index score of 62.25. Home values in Kings County, where the property tax rate was 0.79%, grew by 65.08% in five years (No. 8 overall). Analyzing quality of schools based on math and reading/language arts proficiency scores, Kings County had a 5.00 school rating (No. 3 overall).
Fresno was No. 2 for SmartAsset’s best property tax value list with an index score of 58.56. In Fresno County, with a property tax rate of 0.82%, home values increased by 70.93% over five years (No. 5 overall). The school score index was 7.00 (No. 2 overall). Tulare County came in at No. 5 with an index score of 55.52. Its school rating score was 2.00, with home values increasing by 68.14% (No. 7 overall). It had a 0.75% property tax rate.
Madera County scored at No. 7 with a 53.24 overall index. Home value growth was 71% (No. 4 overall), while the school rating score was 2.00 and the property tax rate was 0.74%. Other counties packing the best overall property tax value list were Imperial at No. 3, Lassen at No. 4 and Merced at No. 6.
https://thebusinessjournal.com/study-central-valley-a-property-tax-value-paradise/
The Inland Empire’s overcrowded logistics and warehousing industry presents more to Kern County than just economic opportunity. It offers what some see as an example of how not to proceed. Growing concern about air pollution in San Bernardino and Riverside counties last month prompted dozens of environmental and community organizations to send a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom asking for a regional moratorium on new warehouse development. He declined, but expectations are that legislation will be reintroduced soon for imposing a 1,000-foot buffer zone between new construction of warehouses and sensitive sites like homes.
As industrial development accelerates in Kern County — in large part, to take up slack created by obstacles to continued expansion in the Inland Empire — developers hope to avoid making the same mistakes in a region that already suffers from air quality that typically ranks as the worst in the country. With its haphazard, inefficient development, the Inland Empire is “not the model that anyone wants to emulate,” said John Guinn, the former Shafter city manager now overseeing private development of the Wonderful Industrial Park, a 1,600-acre, master-planned logistics hub expected to jump from 9,000 employees in Shafter now to 25,000 in the years to come.
The property’s Los Angeles-based owner and developer, The Wonderful Co., for which Guinn works as executive vice president of real estate, says it engages regularly with local environmental justice groups on ensuring sustainability and maximizing community benefit. The company’s Shafter industrial park is located more than a mile from the nearest residence. Wonderful points to investments, existing and planned, for providing renewable energy at the site for operations and transportation fuel. The company also highlights plans for rerouting drayage trucks away from vulnerable communities around Shafter.
“We have carefully planned and worked in collaboration with partners in the region to ensure operations are efficient without adding to those burdens where people live,” Guinn said. “This is where our own employees live, and these communities are our priorities.”
Lebec-based Tejon Ranch Co., another major developer of distribution and industrial space in Kern, with housing proposed within the same commerce center as millions of square feet of warehouse space, sees a “night and day” difference between Kern’s and the Inland Empire’s buildouts, in terms of density and number of projects, spokesman Barry Zoeller said by email.
Under a voluntary agreement with the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, Zoeller noted, the company has funded regionwide measures estimated to make up for all emissions generated by its Tejon Ranch Commerce Center at full buildout. He emphasized the project’s economic benefits.
“Given the number of jobs and economic opportunity it creates, the logistics industry is an important component of Kern’s economic development and diversification strategy,” he wrote.
Activists in the Inland Empire are less certain. Ana Gonzalez, executive director of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, which co-sponsored a report attached to last month’s letter to the governor, said the group’s health concerns would apply to development of distribution centers in Kern.
“It’s the same folks, same mentality,” she said. “They want to get away with the minimal regulations.”
“They’re putting these developments in low-income communities that don’t even benefit from e-commerce,” she said. “At this point we just need state intervention.”
The report CCAEJ put out with the help of the Sierra Club and the Robert Redford Conservancy called the Inland Empire’s warehousing growth a critical environmental justice issue that, because of diesel engines’ heavy emissions of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, has led to inequities in cardiac, respiratory and reproductive problems in vulnerable communities.
More than 300 warehouses stand 1,000 feet or less from 139 schools in the Inland Empire, the report said, adding that 367,584 people live within a quarter mile of a warehouse, about 60 percent of them Hispanic. Besides calling for a one- to two-year moratorium on development while protective new policies can be crafted, the report recommended raising project approval standards, codifying best industry practices and doing more to enforce existing regulations.
A deputy air pollution control officer with the valley air district said all new development, not just warehouses, introduces new emissions from construction, operation and associated truck traffic. The decision on whether to allow them, he noted, comes down to local agencies’ mandated considerations of environmental impacts.
The district generally suggests local governments condition their approval on investments in zero- or near-zero emission vehicles and other equipment, limitations on engine idling, provision of electrical power for refrigeration trucks and planting of vegetative barriers.
“They don’t adopt every measure we put forth,” Deputy Air Pollution Control Officer Morgan Lambert said.
Based on its experience with communities and land-use agencies in warehouse-heavy places like southwest Fresno, he said, the district suggests government work closely with community members “in trying to help address what those impacts may be in those different communities.”
Assuming distribution work can be done responsibly, warehousing and logistics work is seen as a crucial activity that can make sense in Kern.
Industry wages are seen as low, but applications continue to outpace job openings, Bakersfield industrial property broker Wayne Kress said in an email. He noted warehousing uses far less water than ag, and generates greater property tax revenue, at a time when massive fallowing of farmland in the southern valley is expected in the years ahead.
The free flow of goods by road, rail and air must be a primary consideration, said Executive Director Ahron Hakimi of the Kern Council of Governments, which has responsibility for managing congestion throughout the county.
Kern COG has been working with Wonderful and others, including regional and state agencies, on a plan to smooth the flow of cargo through the county for the benefit of local residents and businesses alike.
Rerouting trucks away from communities is part of the idea, along with greater use of intrastate rail, greater automation of goods movement and development of a large intermodal facility to increase efficiencies. No changes are expected soon, and there remains the question of how to fund changes under consideration.
A spokeswoman for the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, a locally active environmental justice group that The Wonderful Co. said it has been working with on equity and sustainability matters in Shafter, said Friday the group could not provide a comment for this story.
Wonderful says it doesn’t plan to move forward in a major way with its development plans in Shafter until it has resolved issues like how to provide renewable energy including truck fuel at the site.
As a company that has made deep investments in different communities in Kern, primarily Lost Hills and Delano, Wonderful says it wants its work in Shafter to help build a community that sustains itself.
“We have a tremendous opportunity,” Guinn said, “to help a lot of people help themselves with better jobs and prospects for their families.”
The new facility could be the first large commercial production of feta cheese in California other than boutique and artisanal makers. Lactalis already markets its brands of feta cheese under various labels including its top seller, President.
Feta cheese is a pickled curd cheese with a salty and tangy taste due to its coupling with brine solution. Popular in Greek cooking the product has taken off in the US (like Greek yogurt) and now is expanding rapidly due to increased use in the fast food industry. In comparison with other cheeses, Feta is a low-fat variety often used on salads and Mediterranean dishes. In Europe and elsewhere, feta cheese is often a blend of cow milk with goat or sheep milk. Here it will be just cow’s milk.
A recent report says “The global feta cheese market size was valued at $10.5 billion in 2019, and is anticipated to reach $15.6 billion by 2028, with a [compound annual growth rate] of 5.7% during the forecast period. The market is expected to exhibit an incremental revenue opportunity of $5.0 billion from 2019 to 2028.”
Already the world’s leader in cheese production, Lactalis acquired a portfolio of iconic cheese brands from Kraft including Cracker Barrel, Breakstone’s, Knudsen, Hoffman’s and a perpetual license for the use of the Kraft brand in natural, grated and international cheeses. Lactalis also acquired the Cheez Whiz brand outside the United States, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and the Philippines and a license for the use of the Velveeta brand in natural and international cheeses. The acquisition included approximately 750 employees and three production facilities located in Tulare, Calif., Walton, N.Y. and Wausau, Wisc. The Kraft/Lactalis plant in Tulare currently employs around 250 people to make mozzarella and parmesan varieties and now feta.
In 2021 before the acquisition of Kraft, the U.S. Department of Justice required Lactalis to divest itself of Kraft’s Athenos, the top selling feta cheese brand in the U.S., and Polly-O brands. They did that. Now Athenos is owned by a Swiss-based company called The Emmi Group.
The Tulare plant and Lactalis’ other U.S. businesses are operating as Lactalis Heritage Dairy, a newly formed division of Lactalis based in Chicago. Groupe Lactalis, the world’s leading dairy group, is a French-family business founded in 1933 in Laval, France. Present in 51 countries, with 266 dairies and cheese dairies throughout the world, its 85,000 employees promote milk in all its forms: cheese, drinking milk, yogurts, butters and creams, dairy ingredients and nutrition. The company also offers products from emblematic international brands such as Président, Galbani and Parmalat.