Tulare Industrial Site Development Foundation marks 40th anniversary
Influential economic development organization
has fueled city's growth, employment base

By George Lurie

Tulare - Forty years ago, one of the most influential organizations in the city's modern history was born. The Tulare Industrial Site Development Foundation (TISDF), founded in 1971, has played a pivotal role in shaping Tulare's growth. The foundation helped lay the groundwork for the creation of Tulare's Industrial Park and during the past four decades, has helped bring some 130 companies to Tulare and approximately 1,500 new local jobs, which, by conservative estimates, today generate between $40 million to $50 million in annual payrolls around the city.

TISDF was the brainchild of city leaders circa 1970, including a group of individuals who comprised the Industrial Development Committee of the Tulare Chamber of Commerce.

“Just after I came to Tulare, I was directed by the city council to make economic and commercial development a focus of my administration,” said Lynn Dredge, who served as Tulare's city manager from 1971 to 1995. “At that time, the first reaction the city was getting from potential businesses considering coming here was that we were too small. 'Why would we choose Tulare over a bigger city like Visalia?' most said. After being rebuffed a number of times, it really emphasized to city leaders the importance of creating an entity like TISDF, which, in cooperation with the city, has helped Tulare accomplish its remarkable business expansion and current commercial viability.”

“We'll need [to raise] $100,000 before this thing can become a reality,” said Frank Hulbert, then president of the Tulare Chamber of Commerce, when the idea of forming TISDF as a private, for-profit economic development entity was first proposed.

City leaders were quick to embrace the concept of creating a private, economic-development organization to assist the city in the formation of its own industrial park in order to compete with Visalia, Porterville, Hanford and other growing Central Valley communities.

In creating its operating structure, TISDF followed the community-involvement model patterned by the California Farm Equipment Show, which later became the World Ag Expo and derived its success and exponential growth, in part, from the countless hours of volunteer help provided each year by hundreds of Tulare residents.

After being formally incorporated in 1971 – with Keith Munger installed as the first board president – it took just one month for TISDF to raise $176,000 through the sale of stock, which sold for $100 a share.

Just a handful of individuals bought blocks of five or more shares; most of the 273 initial investors purchased only one or two shares.

Former Olympic gold medalist and then Tulare Congressman Bob Mathias praised TISDF's formation during an address to Congress. “This accomplishment by the people of Tulare is both remarkable and outstanding,” said Mathias, who also was an early TISDF shareholder. He characterized the foundation as an example of “what a public-spirited people can do when they are determined to achieve a particular goal.”

Said Dredge: “In the early years, [former Tulare Advance-Register editor] Tom Henion and the newspaper did such a great job in telling our story that people bought shares to help move TISDF – and the city -- forward. In every sense, it was a remarkable community effort that helped Tulare insure its future.”

Bob Reynolds, a prominent Tularean who was elected to the TISDF board of directors in 1977, said: “TISDF's main thrust has always been job creation. To convince companies to come to Tulare and to create jobs, we needed to have infrastructure in place and land ready to develop. That's where TISDF has been able to help the city.”

TISDF's early efforts helped fund the completion of the Laspina-Levin sewer project and other necessary infrastructure and in the early 1970s, an empty field between South K and Blackstone streets was quickly transformed into the 163-acre Tulare Industrial Park.

Printing company Reynolds and Reynolds, Whatcom Tractor, Fults Chemical, Ruiz Foods and food box manufacturer Corpak Inc. were among the first companies to set up shop at the Industrial park.

In the late 1970s, Southern California Edison purchased 40 acres at the Industrial Park and built the utility's San Joaquin Valley headquarters. The increasing beehive of activity at the Industrial Park earned Tulare the moniker “Boom Town, USA” and enticed other large companies to build plants at the park, including United States Cold Storage and Dairyman's Cooperative Creamery Association (now Land O'Lakes), which originally developed the Saputo Cheese facility on Paige Avenue.

“Tulare has a history of coming together as a community to get things done,” said Reynolds. “TISDF was able to help provide what companies considering coming to Tulare needed. The foundation has always been unique in that regard.”

In the late 1980s, TISDF signed an agreement with Tipton dairyman Manuel Faria to develop 55 acres of land the Faria family owned adjacent to the Industrial Park. That agreement, which stayed in effect until 2006, helped pave the way for the extension of Commercial Avenue and created additional Industrial Park building sites that were later sold and developed.

Today, 100 percent built out and home to more than a dozen large businesses employing more than 1,500 people, the city's Industrial Park anchors a thriving commercial business hub and provides crucial support to the city's tax base.

Tulare's current industrial and commercial landscape was directly shaped by TISDF's economic development efforts: Companies like Dreyers Grand Ice Cream (Haagen Dazs), Land O'Lakes, Fisher Manufacturing, Freitas Electric, United States Cold Storage and Ruiz Foods would likely not have set up operations in Tulare had TISDF not first blazed a trail.

TISDF's current board of directors includes Dredge, who has served as TISDF president for the past few years. Bob Reynolds is the foundation's secretary. The board also includes Bob Bates (vice-president/treasurer), Mel Heier, Tom Greisbach, Lynn Lampe and J. Michael Lane.

Forty years after its creation, TISDF's focus continues to be trained specifically on economic development and the group remains prepared to assist Tulare land owners interested in developing their properties, said Reynolds.

“We see our role as partnering with land owners who want to sell their property but may not have the capability to put in place the infrastructure to make it developable,” said Reynolds, who adds that TISDF's current investment funds exceed $1 million.

Since TISDF is a for-profit corporation, any deals the organization puts together must also hold the promise of a return on investment for shareholders, who have received an annual dividend every year but one over the past 40 years.

Tulare City Councilman Craig Vejvoda said that since its creation, TISDF has “done some remarkable things for the city of Tulare.”

Vejvoda reported this week that city officials are preparing to roll out a brand new economic development plan sometime in the next “six to eight months. TISDF will certainly be offered an opportunity to partner with the city on the new plan,” Vejvoda said.

The number one goal of the city's revamped economic development strategy, Vejvoda said, will be “creating jobs – which TISDF has a long and proven track record in doing successfully.”

“Right now we are reassessing what we can do as an organization to continue to help the city grow and create more jobs,” said Dredge. “Going forward, it's not really realistic to think we can acquire [large tracts of] land. Back in the 1970s, land was going for $1,200 per acre, which is what we paid for the original 160 acres that became the Industrial Park. Even in today's depressed market,” Dredge added, “an acre is still selling for $50,000 or more. But we can continue to work with the city and individual land owners to develop infrastructure that will set the table for good industries to come our way.”

Dredge sees one of TISDF's primary roles going forward as being able to provide “short-term or gap financing” for industrial or commercial development projects. “We want to continue to create jobs and economic vitality in this community,” he said. “That's why [TISDF] was formed and that mission hasn't changed.”

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