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Visalia tills crops into industrial plants

Dairyman Jay teVelde, Jr. is the latest north Visalia landowner to request a large annexation within the city limits to capitalize on the need for greater industrial space.

TeVelde, Jr. is requesting annexation of more than 300 acres into the City of Visalia that will add more developable land to the Visalia industrial Park. The site is north of Riggin and east of Plaza. The multiple parcels reach close to Highway 99 to Road 68 on the northern edge of Goshen. His mixed-use proposal consists of some residential and commercial designations with 225 acres zoned for industrial uses, according to a recent plan filed with the city.
The proposed annexation adds to five other recent annexations that will bring more residential, big box commercial and industrial uses as the city expands its reach to accommodate growth. A number of these projects are still in the works, including land for Costco to build a new retail store at Riggin and Shirk and add some 500 new homes around it.

Other annexations include a 320-acre industrial project on land owned by the Ritchie family that is in the middle of an environmental review seeking approval probably early next year.

Landowners on the northern tier of Visalia have in the past few decades, cashed in on the fact that development, from residential to industrial, has been moving their way. Names include long time farming families such as Doe, Shannon and Ritchie, and now teVelde, who all own or owned mostly low-value, field-crop land north of the historic city limits. It’s not low value anymore.
Some families have taken a direct hand in the development of these lands like the Shannons, who have developed Shannon Ranch and mixed use residential and retail projects like the new northside Costco project expected to break ground in a matter of months.

Of course, the Doe family has a street in the industrial park named after them and annexed 156 acres into the city a few years ago at the NW corner of Plaza and Riggin, later sold to Fresno developer John Brelsford who is marketing it.

Also, as mentioned, the Ritchie family, who is now annexing a whole section of land into the city, has sold off the development rights to Seefried Industries awaiting completion of their environmental impact report before annexation is approved. This project is a behemoth as Seefried has come to an agreement with the Ritchie family to build a proposed 3.8 million square foot industrial complex north of Riggin Road between Kelsey Street and Shirk Road. The project is expected to employ 4,100 workers at build out.

Another industrial annexation was recently approved on 80 acres at the southwest corner of Riggin and Shirk by YS industries. The project was recently challenged with the lawsuit claiming that the city allowed the project to move forward without proper environmental studies. The city has rejected the assertion and the applicant expects the project to move forward early next year. Part of the land used to be a dairy.

Now to the west, the dairy family led by Jay teVelde, Jr. is planning to develop over 300 acres north of Riggin and west of Plaza (See maps). The specifics of the new teVelde proposal include some 225 acres of industrial, about 50 acres of high density residential and 25 acres of commercial fronting on Riggin. There’s also land set aside for a water storage basin.

Asked this week if he could comment on his annexation request, Jay, Jr. said he could not. Visalia-based 4 Creeks consultants are steering the project through the city approval process.

Family history

The teVelde family have expanded their already successful dairy operation since arriving from Southern California in 1989. Their Facebook page states Double J Dairy started Dec. 1, 1988, as a partnership between Jay teVelde, Sr. and Jay teVelde, Jr. Originally located in Chino, California, the dairy relocated to Visalia in June of 1989. The facility was an open-lot style dairy equipped to milk approximately 1,000 cows. By 1998, the herd expanded to 4,400 milking cows and was remodeled to freestall barns. Over the next two decades, teVelde, Jr. was able to expand his surrounding land base and is now self-sufficient in terms of forages while also diversifying into nut crops.

The teVelde dairy is north of the proposed annexation on Ave 328. Dairies typically own acreage around their dairy to provide a home for their dairy waste and to grow feed crops for their cows. So, it’s not unusual that teVelde owns substantial acreage nearby.

Jay, Jr. penned a paper for his CalPoly studies in 2016 mentioning some family history: “The family finds its dairy roots all the way back to George teVelde, the owner’s grandfather. George immigrated to the United States from the Netherlands in 1920. After arriving in California, George found a job as a milker in southern California. Over time George saved up enough to buy some cows of his own. He was fortunate to have the support of his boss, who helped him get started. George spent much of his working life adding to his business. Eventually George’s sons discovered their own passion for the dairy industry. One of his sons, Jay TeVelde, branched off and started his own dairy. Jay, like his father, spent most of (his) working life expanding his business. Also like his father George, Jay’s children discovered a passion for the dairy industry.”

Flurry of construction

This new annexation project is happening after a flurry of industrial construction took place in the past few years. Now the boom in industrial building activity has turned quiet in the past year. That can be seen by the shiny new 1.2 million square-foot spec building constructed by CapRock completed earlier this summer that sits empty for now. The building on Plaza north of Riggin is a close replica of two other Amazon buildings nearby. But Amazon remains mum on whether they would lease this massive building as well.

CapRock bought several sections of the land on the northeast corner of Plaza and Riggin in the 1990s from a farm family. They worked for a decade unsuccessfully trying to attract major logistic players to Visalia until they did. The big boom began when CapRock sold the corner of Plaza and Riggin to UPS for a Central Valley shipping hub. Many industrial firms use UPS for their daily package shipments.

At the time the paper reported “The Visalia UPS super hub’s location is critical, says CapRock’s Pat Daniels, because “only the Visalia/Fresno area can reach 99% of California with overnight shipments. The UPS Fresno facility is landlocked for growth and the current Visalia UPS terminal is quite small. On July 10, UPS pulled their permit for the shell of the building valued at $21.2 million. The general contractor is Layton Construction.”

CapRock set off the Visalia logistics boom, selling acreage to UPS that became a 450,000 square-foot package distribution hub that opened in 2020. That was followed by construction of the 1.1 million square-foot Amazon fulfillment center, operational as of 2021.  Between the two locations, 1,700 people are employed. That was followed by a second Amazon warehouse now operating.

As the paper has noted before, it took 60 years, 1958 to 2018, for the Visalia Industrial Park to get to 16.6 million square feet. But it may take just a few years, say 2018 to 2024, to double that square footage with all the million-square foot warehouses on tap. Looking at land, the district had 381 acres in 2018 and has already doubled that acreage today.

Not unlike the expansion of retail on Mooney Boulevard from 1980 to 2000, where we saw a steady move to open land to the south, the Visalia Industrial Park has seen a steady move north to more open land and adding larger parcels. The recent move north also includes a big retail push along Dinuba Boulevard replicating many of the retail tenants we see on South Mooney. Retail has followed a rapid construction of homes in the north in recent years. That in turn has been allowed by the city council decision to open its city limits on all sides. But that was held back for a while by a lawsuit requiring ag land mitigation – now an adopted policy. Tulare County’s Local Agency Formation Committee, which oversees municipal district boundaries, has been busy mostly approving new annexations in Visalia at nearly all of its recent meetings.

The opening of vast tracts of land for new industrial uses has its pluses and minuses, you could say. For Visalia, opening all these industrial areas promotes new jobs and tax dollars and growth of the city that may be positive or not. The tracks of land are owned by over a dozen major players allowing for competition on land prices. That helps keep locating a large complex here much cheaper to build than in the big metro areas of California.

There might be a slowdown in tenant decisions to locate here. But a number of spec builders are building in anticipation that the gravy train will continue in the next year or two and that their investment in building before the tenant shows up will pay off. That will require more land. It appears Mr. teVelde is joining the crowd

https://thesungazette.com/article/news/2024/10/17/visalia-tills-crops-into-industrial-plants/

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