State Natural Gas Production Could Double
Suddenly natural gas has replaced Monica Lewinski as the topic of the day. OK, the subject is not sex, it's heat and light.
More than just the clean burning fuel that heats our home, natural gas fires up most of the electricity producing power plants and cogeneration plants on line and more than half the power produced from all sources here. The electricity shortfall in California is prompting rapid deployment of new power plants here with 4308 megawatts under construction and in service in the next two years. By this summer Governor Davis has vowed to encourage the development of an extra 5000 megawatts of electricity to meet the peak demand - virtually all fired by natural gas. If there is enough.
This winter - spurred by a market manipulation - natural gas prices skyrocketed fed by the fact that a limited amount of pipelines feed gas into the state. Prices jumped 700% helping electricity prices to jump on the spot market. That story is now well known. The State of California is now taking over the electricity grid because the two big utilities are on the verge of bankruptcy due to the price spikes.
California produces only about 13% of the natural gas it consumes despite the fact it has huge reserves both on and off shore. "California could produce up to 25% of its needs," says the executive director of the California Independent Petroleum Association, John Martini. That nearly double the current production. "We could do that without drilling off shore," he says.
Big Reserves
Martini says the state Department of Conservation - Division of Oil and Gas estimates we have about 3 trillion cubic feet of natural as in reserves in the state and some 21 trillion cubic feet just off shore. Meanwhile, the production in the state last year was about 282 billion cubic feet. The state has in the past produced nearly three times that amount.
Of the 3 trillion cubic feet in reserves in the state Randy Adams, spokesman for the Division of Oil and Gas, says 1.8 trillion of that - approaching two thirds - is in District 4, Kern and Tulare counties.
Adams explains that natural gas wells in Kern on both the east side and west side of the valley are associated with oil production. The natural gas pulled from the ground is used to fire boilers that makes steam and the steam is injected back into the ground to lift the heavy viscosity oil we produce in the south San Joaquin. That's why many of the proposed new power plants that will light California homes in the next decade will be located in and around Kern County.
So the supply is there and with higher prices in the market place, John Martini says the incentive is there to drill "if you can hook up to a pipeline" and there is capacity in that line.
Martini says interfacing with the utilities on management of the pipelines, laying down new pipeline and adding pipeline storage and blending facilities in state would make the difference.
Reports from the California Energy Commission are that the state's gas distribution network has not been expanded in 8 years.
To get the utilities to cooperate with independent producers "we'd like to put some teeth into the law called the California Natural Gas Quality Act that mandates utilities cooperate with producers," says the trade association head. The group represents 70% of the in-state natural gas producers.
"This has been a big issue with us for the past 15 years but we're glad it is on the radar screen now. "
Martini says environmental concerns about more gas well drilling shouldn't be factor. "We're not your grandfather's oil and gas industry," he notes. He says the state environmental record and new low emission technology are light years ahead of the former practices.
Large proven reserves in southern Tulare County make it an attractive place to drill along with a large reserve in Kern and Sacramento counties. Counties get large revenues off these wells.
Martini suggests drilling off shore is practical as well, given the nationwide shortfall and lack of competition between a few pipeline companies bringing the vital gas into the state. "Despite fears of another oil spill accident off Santa Barbara - he says the oil and gas industry off shore has spilled only a couple of hundred barrels off shore while millions of barrels of oil have seeped into the sea floor. "There is indication that drilling relieves the pressure," he says. But Martini is aware that increasing drilling for natural gas off shore will take a long time at "public education" if not a major turn around in the political winds.
South Valley Source
Even without that supply Martini says local producers can do their part to provide gas to Californians and the south valley can be the major source of that supply. The issue becomes even more critical knowing that state demand for natural gas will increase 25% over the next year according to the new White Paper done late last month by the Energy Commission. The paper says that more interstate and intra-state pipeline needs to be laid down. Some companies are converting oil pipelines to gas. The state says it has two applications pending to expand pipelines from Kern fields. Also 7 new pipelines are on the drawing board. Recently control by El Paso Natural Gas over to pipeline coming into the state prompted complaints by the PUC that El Paso was using its dominate position to gouge Californians.
Plans by Davis to bring an additional 5000 megawatts of power to the marketplace as soon as this summer are being tested by the California Energy Commission. Spokesman Rob Schlichting says the agency is about to release a plan outlining some 400 potential locations where developers might look to site new "peaking plants" - temporary power facilities that need to burn as cleanly as permanent plants. That work is being done because one developer proposed 6 peaking plants last year without throughly studying site locations. Now those peaking plant applications have been withdrawn causing Senator Chuck Poochigian this week to complain that "six of the nine plants approved by the Energy Commission for construction have been dropped and they will not be built." But Schlichting explains that one developer proposed all six and withdrew them without the Energy Commission's input at all. "He proposed locations where he had not spoken to the utilities and others near schools and hospitals," says Schlichting. "We want to make sure that doesn't happen again and that's why we are suggesting locations.
The best locations? Site plants next to existing plants, where production is already happening, where natural ga is available and the infrastructure is in place and where air credits are available. If the air credits can be worked - it sounds like the southern San Joaquin Valley. "We're ready to permit new plants in 21 days," says the Energy Commission who has one stop jurisdiction over power plant siting now both above 50 megawatts and below.
"Our focus is threefold," says Schlichting
• New generation
• Promote conservation
• Insure the electricity delivery system works the way it should.
State Is Power Buyer
Schlichting says small producers of power don't have to wait for the big users to buy their power. "Now they can sell to the state Department of Water and Power," he says. "We want power producers to contact us." He says the agency will pay up to 50% of the cost of a facility if it uses renewables.
On the conservation front, Schlichting says that the state is looking to provide consumer incentive shortly to increase purchase of energy efficient applies including refrigerators and air conditioners. Already he says that today's refrigerators use one third the power that refrigerators did 20 years ago. "If everyone in the state turned off just one light we'd save about 100 megawatts in the state, he says. One megawatt serves about 1000 homes.
Supervisor Bill Maze of Tulare County says he favors local generation of power. Local power avoids transportation problems from far away places and costs to send it. It provides a revenue stream and encourages economic development since if the power and natural gas and water are all nearby - manufacturers and industries will want to be there too. If you make your own power, heat your home from local source and have a job - who need the big utilities or imported resource that brings our economy to its knees?
Desperate farmers meeting in Sacramento this past week suggested they were ready to take to the street to get their message of economic woe out - prompting the idea of a new tractorcade to Sacramento. The state's Farm Bureau has a label for what is happening, "Crisis on the Farm." In the farm press a drum beat of gloom has been rising.
"This is about the most widespread case of low farm prices than anything I've seen," says ag economist Dan Sumner who directs the University of California Agricultural Issues center. "We don't know when a turn around is coming."
Increasingly low commodity prices are being blamed on trade pacts like GATT and NAFTA that have forced US and California farmers to sell their crops at low world prices often below the cost of production. California is now joining farmers from the Midwest who - unlike here - are locked into only a few crops to sell. Now here in the cornucopia of the world, prices are hurting from apples to zucchini.
Locals Ask For Help Under New Farm Bill
In recent weeks the focus of local farm leaders has been to plead their case to leaders where they hope and expect will take the message to Congress to be addressed in the new Farm Bill.
Manuel Cunha - small grower advocate with Nisei farmers league is blunt about the prospects for the 55,000 small farmers of California. "We're looking at the end of agriculture as we know it in California in the next five years unless we do something." Cunha sounds a populist call when he lays out what is going on.
"Imports are flooding into the state," says Cunha, priced far lower than at what a local farmer can produce the same commodity. "Our garlic farmers need 90 cents for a whole fresh garlic and China is bringing it in for 30 cents." He says that "my fresh flower growers are being clobbered by third world competition" and the dried fruit industry faces the same problem.
Tradition valley crops like cotton and tomatoes are facing bleak prospects this harvest season and growers don't have another alternative that look any better. Increasingly the response has been they will plant nothing. (See last issue of the Valley Voice)
Globalization of the commodity marketplace is prompting countries with labor costs that are a fraction of the US and few environmental regulations to send its production to the US - the biggest marketplace for goods. To meet their balance of payments need they have exported whatever they can produce and send it to the US - a country that now demands year round produce - and they don't care from where.
Cunha says that the issue that needs to be addressed in the coming Farm Bill is simply to "level the playing field in the global marketplace" that includes insuring that US farmers can at least offer a product domestically that pays enough to keep the farmer on the farm. "Do you want to be held hostage by a third world country for your food like we've done with our energy," asks Cunha?
To stem the tide of a flood of imports Cunha says he is ready to support "country of origin" labels on imports - so the public will know it's buying foreign produce. Like an increasingly number of farmers, Cunha faults consolidation in the food industry and particularly in the retail grocery business for the trouble we're in. "I'm ready for a full blown congressional hearing. We used to have 70 buyers competing for our produce and now we have 20," says Cunha.
More and more those buyers are buying imports at the border and bringing them instead of from California growers. "That includes the raisin industry" the mainstay of Cunha's grower base - now suffering a depression of low prices. Despite a glut product here, imported raisins are being selected because a buyer finds it cheaper to import. "They can get raisins for $650 a ton at the border."
Ask the olive industry if that lament has a familiar ring. The US food service industry has bought overseas for the past few years helping to send the California olive industry into a tailspin. Hundreds of acres of olive trees have been pulled here - not because folks are eating less olives, but because of imports.
Consolidation in the food industry is a fact of life in ag business now with companies like IBP merging with Tyson to create a company that will have 30% of the beef market, 33% of the chicken market and 18% of the pork market. Pepsi now owns Quaker Oats - the cereal maker.
It's not just retailers who are causing this. Exporting countries subsidize their growers big time. As the orange industry. Speaking at a Farm Bill forum held in Fresno this summer, Shirley Batchman of California Citrus Mutual says that subsidiaries from European citrus growers have flooded the US market with climate oranges amount to $1.8 billion. "Our government has chosen to ignore that." The US apple industry is shuttering because China - who Cunha says he planted more than 6 million acres of apples - is now not just coming with US grown apples in the export market - they are flooding the US market.
Cunha will lead a delegation to this week's hearing by the US EPA over tighter air restrictions for farmers being proposed for the Valley. They are ready to explode if the EPA tries to shove mandatory curtailment down their throat, says Cunha, although they are ready to do voluntary restrictions. Cunha sits on the USDA advisory board on air issues and says there is "good science" underway to quantify ag's contribution to our air emission problems, but restricting farm emissions now "would be shooting from the hip."
Cunha says poor raisin prices and the energy crisis in California is prompting him to take a look at siting an ethanol producing plant using bulk raisin as a fuel source that would generate electricity.
Is the wine industry the only bright spot? Cunha says imported wine concentrate is coming into California to be blended with local product. This in a state that wine grapes planted fence to fence row up and down the state.
For the first time California speciality growers are asking to be included in the 2002 Farm Bill that will be taken up in Congress over the next few months.
A Farm Bureau task force meeting in Sacramento if February suggested:
1. Give California's speciality crop farmers and livestock ranchers a say in the 2002 Farm Bill;
2. Provide tax breaks for farmers to compensate them for high input costs;
3. Abolish estate taxes ("Kill the death tax");
4. Guarantee energy and water supplies for agriculture;
5. Level the playing field in the global market in order to increase California exports;
6. Require country-or-origin labeling of imported food products;
7. Implement a moratorium on retail consolidation.
Congressman Cal Dooley in the district this week said he is urging both the state and federal water regulators to increase their estimate of the amount of water available to farmers this season based on the fact that the state has received good rain and snow fall in recent weeks. Still both agencies are predicting only a 15% water delivery schedule - a devastatingly low amount for farmers. The worst is that bankers - overhearing this won't lend to farmers in order to plant, says Dooley.
While farmers get squeezed on the sales side, their costs go higher. Input costs of energy, to labor or regular paper work continue to go up while prices are at 1968 level, says one farmer.
Fresno Hearing
Used to be most California farmers didn't expect or get much out of the Farm Bill that makes it way through congress every five years. With the coming of the year 2002 Farm Bill that is expected to change as many of the state's 50,000 small farmers - typically growing speciality crops never covered by the congress before - are almost uniformly hurting.
In recent days USDA/CDF coordinated forums held up and down the state have wound up and the word "crisis on the farm" is on everyone's lips.
The forums began earlier this fall including a November forum in Fresno and continued through this month at eight other locations. California has joined with ag producers from New Mexico, Florida, Arizona, California and Texas - NFACT coalition that represents over a quarter of the US production - to try to get more clout as farmers press their case nationwide for help for the traditional field crop commodities in Washington. The coalition is holding "listening sessions" for farmers through the five states.
While producers in some states dominated by field grain crops get a large portion of farm income from the government, California's gets only 2% out of its $25 billion income annually. That does effect cotton growers here and some field crop subsidies - dairy farmers. But the Farm Bill now is seen as the vehicle for farm policy including trade issues, conservation, price supports and the move through the last Farm Bill to award competition on the world market.
That has been the shock many producers have felt, says farm economist Jerry Seibert who attended the Fresno forum. The 96 act "made us more dependent on world markets," he told the forum and that the reason "why so many of you in this room are in fairly serious financial difficulty."
Joe Flores of California Farmer Advocate suggested imported produce be fumigated since lots of bulk products are repackaged here and sold as California product when it is in fact imported - but not labeled that way. He said that's especially true with vegetables from Mexico. Others point out that foreign producers can use products outlawed here for farm production - a case of an unlevel playing field. Few trucks are inspected at the border. Meanwhile, "100% of our outgoing stuff is inspected." "Consumers given a choice want to buy local," says Flores. Food is like air and water - it's got to be safe and that may or may not be true with foreign produce, he believes. He believes the country of origin can show up on the bar code of food products. Grape grower Doris Halemeier agrees saying every time she goes to the grocery store she asks where produce is coming from. "Our clothing has a label on it and many other items do, it's time that we got it on our food." "Holding other countries to the same standards we are held to is not protectionism," says Alan Kasparian.
Ms. Halemeier reminded the group that it's the government wanting farms to keep produce coming and the farmer to be good stewards of the land, the elimination of estate tax as it affects farmers would be helpful. "We used to farm quite a bit on both the east and west of Fresno, but with each death in the family, we had to sell land to pay the taxes." Joaquin Contente, California Farmers Union, says the Farm Bill set the policy that has resulted in low commodity prices now because of globalization.
Box Of Wheaties
"I remember being in St. Louis and hearing Jim Hightower holding up a box of Wheaties selling for $3. The farmer got 2 cents out of that box," he says. "Today a guy shoots a basketball or hits a golf ball and he gets 10 cents for his picture being on every box," said Kerman farmer Walt Shubin. "I'm getting less for my commodities than it did fifty years ago."
Xavier Avila, California Dairy Campaign, says the last Farm Bill took away "conservation land not farm land, thirty million acres I think and look what happened to prices when that ground was used up." He suggests you can import all the food into the country, farm fence row to fence row and continue to make a good living. Instead set aside some ground and put the money back into wildlife preservation," he suggests.
After hearing concerns by dairy farmers, Manuel Cunha of Nisei Farmers League spoke on behalf of air quality issues as it affects dairy farmers, particularly lobbyists for more money for research that should be funded through the Farm Bill.
Raisins are facing a problem "because processors can go across the border and buy them for $650 a ton delivered to their back door." The Fresno area is going the same way as Florida - they aren't growing tomatoes any more because of NAFTA.
The citrus industry was represented at the meeting this day by Citrus Growers Mutual's Shirley Batchman. She says that the European Union who dumps citrus here subsidized their growers to the tune of $1.2 billion in one year. "Our government has chosen to ignore that."
She points out that retail consolidation is a major issue of all farmers. "We have five to eight buyers for all the produce," she says.
Joaquin Contente, California Farmers Union, suggested that there are about a million farmers in the country basically selling to about 20 entities. "When you lose the balance of buyer and seller, you lose capitalism."
Flores says big conglomerates are selling off their lands in California and the US - entities like Dole who are farming in foreign countries like Brazil, Chile and Mexico and "farm that product for four dollars a day" and bring it into this country. "Our own corporations are abandoning their farms and going into foreign ground farming, sending back product and killing the markets for the American farmers." He says we need to put a stop to that.
"Imagine if the American farmer goes under, food and water are the two main things that hold a country together. If the American farmer goes down in this nation, we're going to be very, very vulnerable. That's all I got to say," says Flores.
"The economy of the valley is tied very heavily to the small farm. And this winter, the tractor dealers, the car dealerships, and a lot of other people in this area are going to feel the pinch of let's say raisin price, that's what I know the best, back at 1968 levels. And there's no other costs that I have that I'm paying everyday, gas and other things, that are at the 1968 level," says Alan Kasparian.
Competition is not happening just with corporations, it's happening with larger farmers buying up their neighbor. Xavier Avila says "I kinda, you know, use an analogy like this. There's two guys in the woods and there's a bear that's coming after them. One of them stops to start putting on his tennis shoes and his friend says, hey, you're not going to outrun that bear. And he says I don't need to outrun that bear, I just need to outrun you. That's what's going on."
Gene Lundquist of Calcot chimed in on retail consolidation noting that "these people are dictating prices and sometimes below the cost of production and the cost of production for the textile industry to produce yarn. "Farmers don't want welfare. If you put us on an equal playing field we'll do very good," says Xavier Avila.
Citrus industry rep Shirley Batchman asked for crop insurance to cover quarantine issues.
"Imagine if the American farmers goes under, food and water are the two main things that hold a country together. If the American farmer goes down in this nation, we're going to be very, very vulnerable. That's all I got to say," one farmer told the panel.
Other Factors
Clearly imports are not farmers only problem. Technology only, gene splicing and improving cultural practices means that fewer acres of land can produce farm product than only decades ago. Now software an robotics may do more of the heavy lifting in the future even as high tech companies figure out how to produce food without stepping outdoors. Consider California sugar growers already hurt by world ag prices now fact lab based sweeteners some hundreds of thousands times sweeter than sugar. The prospect of lab ag may put millions of subsistence farmers in the third world who produce sugar out on the streets as well. Food from a test tube doesn't have to worry about the weather in this brave new world.
Beyond this issue American farmers are so productive they produce themselves out of business. So Tennessee farmers and writer Wendell Berry notes that "but any abundance, in any amount, is illusory if it does not safeguard its producers, and in American agriculture it is now virtually the accepted rule that abundance will destroy its procucers."
Tulare County - Democratic Congressman Cal Dooley who just a few months ago lashed out at farm proponents of a guest worker program that would bring in thousands of Mexican temporary workers to the central valley is now working to support a compromise bill.
The bill promoted by Nisei Farmers League president Manuel Cunha with apparent support of the United Farmerworkers Union nearly passed Congress late last year.
Cunha was a major supporter of Dooley opponent Richard Rodriguez who supported bringing in the workers because farmers claimed they are constantly short on labor.
Dooley disputed the notion pointing to high unemployment levels in towns like Cutler Orosi where 35% of the work force is sometimes out of a job. "There was no evidence that not even one nectarine, plum or orange was not picked because of a labor shortage," he remarked during the recent campaign.
The new Ag Jobs bill, as it is called, was forged between ag interests and labor advocates that include Congressman Howard Berman. It satisfies labor advocates since it calls for legalizing the workforce already here - hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who live here would be granted amnesty. Penalties against employers who hire illegal workers would be eliminated. Temporary legal residency would be offered for seasonal farmworkers who agree to work a certain amount of time in farming. After five years - according to the latest version - they could apply for legal residency.
Ag labor advocates says they expect an influx of about 150,000 workers to take advantage of the program.
Under the proposed law each state employment service would create a farmwork registry that would screen workers. If an adequate supply could be shown the service would issue a certificate to import workers.
Not only does this version of a Guest Worker plan have some strange bedfellows - staunch conservatives like Senator Phil Gramm aren't supporting their version of the idea. Gramm "to the surprise of allies and opponents" now supports the idea of importing Mexican workers for areas with labor shortages as long as they return home.
Mexican workers sent home an estimated $6 billion a year from work done in the US. But Gramm, to the chagrin of immigrants, opposes workers to apply for residency nor does it allow amnesty for those already here. Three million Mexicans live in the US by one estimate, illegally.
In recent days the UFW has chimed in supporting a bill in Congress to grant amnesty to undocumented immigrants regardless of their current status. Within five years immigrants who have worked here for five years to apply for residency. The advocate suggested in California that could give legal residency to more than 300,000 undocumented immigrants.
Cunha says the talks between himself and UFW president Arturo Rodriguez have been "unprecedented" in that the two long rival organizations have now come up with a plan bot can live with. "This has not happened in 35 years of rivalry," he notes.
Cunha says Gramm's approach won't work for ag "since it doesn't allow guest workers to come in if the unemployment rate is above 5%. We have some more education to do in Washington," he says. In addition, Gramm's bill doesn't tie the guest worker to any industry and ag needs that.
Dooley this week says that the compromise between ag and labor that has been drafted "is now falling apart since with Bush in there some ag interests think they can get a better deal."
This issue was high profile this past week at print George Bush visited Mexican president Vincente Fox who is promoting the idea of an open border in the US like Europe has.
That idea may not go over well in many parts of the US where there is concern that a flood of new immigration will hurt the economy - not help it.
The founder of the UFW Cesar Chavez himself spoke out against the use of Barcero program into the US noting that growers always claimed there was a labor shortage to keep wages low.
From 1942 to 1964, about 5 million Mexican men worked as braceros - working arms - on American farms and railroads, initially to fill wartime labor shortages. By its end, however, the bracero program had deteriorated amid abuses by employers and deadly workplace accidents.
What would Cesar say today about a proposal that would bring in more workers to help ag?
Cunha says the existing work force moves across the border at great peril. In the future crossing the border would mean workers don't have to carry drugs or suffocate in car trunks if they try to get into the US.
Cunha says that the current problem doesn't offer ag an opportunity to bring in foreign workers in an emergency. But his plans would allow the US Attorney General to certify an emergency and in 24 hours workers could be brought in.
Cunha says he doubts the regulations of a new law could be written in time for this coming harvest season even if a bill passes in the next few months.
One story is that while traditionally unions feel they can't organize guest workers it remains the only game in town for organizers who see this labor force as potential members for the future. Likewise for Democrats who may see future voters.
Critic and columnist George Ann Geyer says organized labor while losing members across the country "see their power threatened by globalization and by breakup of national industries, the unions are moving to import a new proletariat."
For farmers it remains a way to insure a labor supply that will be there when the raisins need turning.
But what happens to the thousands of unemployed people that already fill the welfare, unemployment and hospital emergency rooms lines? What happens to a new influx of workers who set up camps in our surrounding towns? What happens to schools when the new arrivals also bring in their families and their relatives to live here? Who pays local jurisdiction of the extra police, fire, health costs?
Two schools of thought on the guest workers idea make it difficult to assess the impact.
Making it easier for Mexicans to come and go would encourage them to return home instead of becoming illegal in the United States, said Andres Rozental, Mexican co-chair of an advisory panel. He proposed signing a social security agreement that would allow Mexican workers to receive the benefits of years of work in the United States if they go back to Mexico.
On the other hand expanding of the guest worker program in the US some believe that economic reforms in Mexico will not be implemented while the existing work force in the US is harmed. Particularly hurt would be the low wage earners who live here already. The upshot of this theory is that temporary workers tend to become permanent residents.
On the event George Bush's visit to Mexico last week the Washington based group Negative Population growth urged Bush resist the call for a new guest worker plan saying that "The US population is already growing out of control," says NPG Executive Director Sharon Stein. "We shouldn't be adding to this staggering, environmentally-destructive growth with what amounts to more permanent immigration."
The US population is slated to grow from 283 million today to nearly 400 million by 2050, with more than two-thirds of that growth due to immigration.
"Do you think America should pardon illegal immigrants for breaking our law and reward them with an amnesty?" says one school of thought.
In the past, anti-immigrant sentiment has swelled in the United States during economic downturns.
Visalia - Visalia's Planning Commission will get a first look at plans for a proposed south Mooney shopping center next month as momentum builds for an even larger project than anticipated. "We believe we are up to about 650,000 sq. ft.," says developer Don Orosco, to be built at one time on three different sites south of Packwood Creek. "It amounts to another regional center for Visalia," says the Monterey developer. By comparison - all of Visalia Mall is only 450,000 sq. ft.
Orosco already had one 30 acre site on the east side of Mooney under contract to purchase along with the Kasbergen property on the west side. Now Orosco says they have an option as well on the Sprague property also on Mooney's west side bringing the center's potential acreage to around 100 acres. "We expect to begin building by September," says Orosco.
One key to just how large the center might be is any decision by Costco to build a new store just south of their existing outlet. The new store could feature a gas station in front and a store about a third larger.
Options for the big membership warehouse to expand in their existing center have decreased now that Home Base, which is closing in the next few months, has decided to retain their building to be remodeled into their new format store - House 2 Home. Costco might have bought the home improvement store's site allowing them to expand if the chain had decided to simply close the Visalia Home Base.
Spokesperson for Home Base, Jennifer Love, says the Mooney store is now being liquidated and will close April 3. Remodeling of the store to the new format - considered more family oriented featuring housewares and furniture - will last until June when the store reopens, she says. The new format store is expected to hire more employees than the old do-it-yourself warehouse outlet did.
Costco is reportedly also considering a site east of Mooney on Caldwell. Orosco is working with Costco on a site on the westside of Mooney.
On the eastside of Mooney, Orosco's big tenant is apparently Lowe's - the fast growing home improvement store. A third large major - new to the market - is under wraps for the third center located south of Packwood on the west side.
The idea that too much development south of the creek - land formerly off limits to development - could hurt development along the rest of the strip or incoming centers on 198 may surface as the potential to cluster a number of new large and medium size big box stores in one location grows.
"Sounds like Riverpark in Fresno," says one critic. That Fresno development is Fresno's hot retail spot while much of Blackstone has lost big name tenants. Today Barnes and Noble is planning on shutting their store only to reopen at Riverpark.
Still competing shopping centers at Akers and 198, Westland Development and Dave Paynter's Mooney and Walnut site, say they too are making progress. The Westland project is expecting to break ground in September. The Westland project will release their draft EIR in coming weeks. Despite the long delay to develop the old Sin City property Paynter says he's not giving up on the center.
Some retailers says they like the south Mooney shopping center idea because the synergy of clustered stores draws more traffic. Also the location is ideal for reaching the Tulare as well at the Visalia market - bad news for Tulare.
Still to sorted out are who takes the big 100,000 sq. ft. space to be vacated by Costco? The rumor mill says Costco has someone - not a retailer. The site has been listed as available in a trade magazine.
Is Target a player? Target is apparently not going to build a new super Target after all in Visalia, sources say. A Super Target sells groceries too.
Dillards continues to be the subject of speculation in town as the department store looks to expand to more locations in California. Some speculate they are a potential buyer for the soon to be vacant Montgomery Ward store.
The above stories are the property of The Valley Voice Newspaper and may not be reprinted without explicit permission in writing from the publisher.
