Former Fair CEO Tells Her Side of Story
Harmon: “I Was Devastated”

Valley Storms Putting Strain on Area Cotton Growers

Northside Shopping Center To Break Ground This Week

Visalia - Anchored by a Food 4 Less grocery store, a new 163,000 sq ft shopping center on Dinuba Blvd. at Ferguson is set to break ground this week. So says owner Joe Gong who has been working on the project for almost three years. “Our contractor, Johnson Construction, will be doing the new shopping center,” says Gong with construction taking five to six months. The center will include a new 58,000 sq ft Food 4 Less – a franchise Gong has in other valley towns.

The store will replace the old Fairway Market just south of the new center - a store built in 1972 and about half the size of the new warehouse store.

In the three years Gong has been working on the first major retail development on Visalia’s northside there has been an explosion of new home subdivisions that the new supermarket will serve along with the longtime residential population in the surrounding northside blocks.

“We plan to service the entire community,” says the veteran Visalia grocer who will now close the last of what once were three Fairway Markets that used to service parts of Visalia.

The latest to close was the Fairway Market on Tulare Ave. and Santa Fe. Gong says the vacant property will likely get a new user with negotiations underway. Sources say the building will be divided.

The existing Fairway Market on Dinuba Highway will close the day the new Food 4 Less will open up, says Gong. Negotiations are underway for this spot as well.

Broker Walter Smith who is in charge of leasing the center for Mr. Gong says interest by national retailers has been strong in part because of all the publicity over a planned regional shopping center a few blocks to the north being developed by developer heavyweight Donohue Schrieber. That center is said to be anchored by Target and Home Depot - the first time national retailers have been interested in any retail site north of 198.

The layout of the new Gong shopping center shows space for a 30,000 sq ft retailer plus smaller 10,000 to 15,000 sq ft users. “We have a full spectrum on retailers and restaurants eyeing our development,” says Smith who works for Pearson Grubb and Ellis.

The center is nearly 20 acres located at the southwest corner of Ferguson and Dinuba Highway. The new Visalia Community Bank is located just across the state highway.

Boosting the chances for success of this center is the fact that other planned centers in the area including the proposed center at Riggin and Dinuba Highway and Riggin at Demaree don’t include a supermarket.

The likelihood a new drug store comes into the Gong center are good, say sources. Walgreens is just down the street but Longs, Rite Aide and CVS are all looking for sites in north Visalia.

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Pacific Ethanol Puts Visalia Plant On Back Burner

Visalia - Fast growing Pacific Ethanol has put their planned Visalia biofuels plant on the back burner announcing in their 10-K annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission that they no longer hold an option on 89 acres across Hwy 99 from the Visalia airport. The Fresno based company led by Bill Jones had been planning their next ethanol plant after completion of their $55 million Madera facility this fall. “Visalia won’t be our second plant but we are still very interested in the site,” says Tom Koehler, spokesman for the publically traded company. “Visalia will be the likely location for our new cellulosic plant,” says Koehler rather than using corn shipped from the Midwest as feedstock to make the renewable fuel.

The Visalia site owned by Kent Kaulfuss of Wood Industries had been optioned since 2003 by Pacific Ethanol – an option the company gave up as of December 15, 2005 says the report. Mr. Kaulfuss was not available for comment.

Pacific Ethanol’s EIR on this property is being done by Quad Knopf which is on hold right now as well.

Loop Track Expense

Hurting the chances to build the next plant is the expense of building a loop train track circling the 89 acre site to accommodate the unit trains that brings in 100 box cars at a time. “The cost of building the infrastructure was a major factor,” confirms Koehler.

Dependent on the importing of Midwest corn to California - companies look to build new ethanol refineries at existing feed mill sites or nearby where there is already 100 car capacity for those unit trains like in Pixley and Hanford where Calgren is planning to build two plants or in Goshen where the valley’s only ethanol production plant was constructed adjacent an existing mill.

A cellulose based ethanol plant would be less dependent on rail shipments than a corn based project. Sources say Union Pacific that in earlier days might have helped fund the construction of a mile loop track to get future business has two shippers on the UP line that would be competitors to the new Pacific Ethanol site and may not want to offer assistance to the ethanol company now - particularly one like Pacific Ethanol who has plenty of funding themselves.

Pacific Ethanol has said it plans to build five ethanol plants by the end of 2008 and Koehler says “I hope Visalia will be one of them - just not the next in line.”

The company now has 60 acres optioned somewhere in the central valley, confirms Koehler, where Pacific Ethanol can take advantage of approximately 1.4 million dairy cows. That’s because the ethanol plants produce distillers grain - a byproduct of the process to make ethanol that is an excellent cattle feed.

The price of this feed recently has dropped however, making proximity to dairy area less important than earlier believed.

$84 Million

Pacific Ethanol released some good news in the same report and that was that Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates has invested $84 million in the company and Gates representatives have joined the board. Gates now controls about 25% of the governing power of the company, says the annual report, compared to about 30% for the existing directors.

Gates bought the shares of the company at $16 per share as of April 13. The share price in recent weeks has jumped to double that as ethanol stocks have skyrocketed in a dot com like frenzy in the marketplace, say industry watchers. The deal with Mr. Gates allows Pacific Ethanol to use $4 million of the proceeds for working capital with the remainder to build or acquire ethanol plants.

Talks between Pacific Ethanol and other California producers like Calgren and the owners of the Goshen plant are said to be active as well.

The Goshen plant - as reported in the last issue of the Voice is in the process of being purchased by an investment group - Altra - formerly Malibu Capital Partners.

President of the company, Larry Gross, told the Voice “we have signed a letter of intent to acquire the plant but are releasing no other details.”

Pacific spent almost $1 million to carry out a feasibility report on the Visalia plant site but now the site and its project remains a question mark. The ethanol industry’s new plants of the future will be based on using waste plant material to make ethanol rather than corn once technology is proven - thought to be a few years away.

President Bush himself has promised to push so-called cellulosic ethanol - a process that should cut the cost to make ethanol.

Ethanol is widely seen as a major fuel substitute for gasoline with some cars able to run on 85% ethanol mixed with 15% gasoline. Ethanol demand in California could grow by 75% in coming years with the in state production having the shipping advantage over the Midwest.

$70 Oil

Ethanol is considered a very good business right now with the entire nation switching off of MTBE and talk of importing ethanol to insure there is enough. Positioned as a clean substitute for oil and gas, ethanol prices are nevertheless pegged to oil prices which have reached the $70 a barrel netherland right now. Higher oil prices should translate into higher ethanol prices and good news for these local plants.

The question remains - is the area too saturated with ethanol plants however, with five either on the drawing board, under construction or operating. Closest to breaking ground nearby is the Calgren plant in Pixley expecting to grade earth next month.

Also joining the Pacific Ethanol board is Doug Kieta who was Senior VP of Construction and Engineering with Calpine recently. Calpine - the energy company declared bankruptcy recently. Sources say with all the demand to build ethanol plants across the nation, construction expertise is gold.

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Kraft Closing Visalia Plant Company Ends Long History Here

Visalia - Visalia’s oldest food manufacturer, Kraft/Knudsen, will shut down in April 2007 the company announced earlier this month. Opened in Visalia in 1927 the existing plant on Divisidero at Goshen Ave. was built in 1946 and for decades was heralded as the largest cottage cheese plant in the world.

Beginning this November Kraft will transition production of sour cream and cottage cheese to its much larger sister plant with over 500,000 sq ft that will become Kraft’s regional plant for the area, a spokesperson said. The old Knudsen plant is 134,000 sq ft on about six acres.

Kraft bought the Knudsen plant in 1986 when it picked up the Knudsen brand.

The Visalia plant employs 160 people. About 70 hourly workers and 10 salaried staff will relocate to the remodeled Tulare facility, said the company, meaning 80 workers in Visalia will be losing their jobs.

The Visalia plant has always been a union plant while the newer Tulare plant is non-union. Some employees at the Visalia plant say Kraft’s move is a union busting move aimed at cost cutting. “This is their way of getting rid of the union,” one worker told the Voice. The Teamsters existing union contract is up in August 2007.

Secretary/treasurer of the local Scott Lupo says the union got “only ten minutes notice before Kraft told the world” about the closure. He says details of the closure haven’t been worked out with the company although a negotiation session on the terms of the transfer of personnel are pending.

Lupo says dairy companies in the central valley - some with long time union contracts - “go out of their way” to build new plants without union contracts. That includes Kraft Land O’Lakes with their new CPI plant and Leprino in Lemoore. “Our Leprino East plant is long time union and the company is the best in production and quality,” says Lupo. But Leprino invested in a separate Leprino West plant a few miles away that is nonunion. “I think they are shooting themselves in the foot because although their labor cost is higher there are fewer quality and production programs.” Teamsters Local 517 has about 1700 members, says Lupo from Madera south to Kings and Tulare Counties.

Kraft denies any union consideration citing the age of the facility and the need by the food processor to cut costs amid stiff competition. Kraft in January announced the closure of 20 plants across the nation not saying which ones will close. This is now the third plant on the chopping block announced since January 30.

An important consideration for the dairy industry is that Kraft will be relocating only the cultured products to Tulare and no longer making butter/powder as part of the process. The big cooperative, California Dairies, supplies both the Kraft plants, says CEO Gary Korsmeier who says he wasn’t surprised by the announcement. “This plant has a lot of age on it,” saying that about half the Knudsen plant’s capacity - 750,000 lbs of milk will have no home once the facility closes next year. “This will be lost plant capacity in California,” says Korsmeier.

California Dairies plans to open its own new dairy plant in Visalia by October of 2007 adding five million lbs of new capacity to take in milk.

Korsmeier says he is not optimistic that another dairy company will operate the Visalia Knudsen plant due to the age of the equipment that will be remaining after Kraft relocates the best of it to Tulare.

However it could offer a chance for other food processing. Visalia officials hope to restore some or all to those jobs.

“Getting those jobs back is our top priority,” says Glenn Morris who heads the Visalia Economic Development Corporation. “We’ll see what kind of uses the company considers likely,” says Morris noting that the plant - once located out in the countryside is now surrounded mostly by houses.

Visalia’s bad news is Tulare’s good news with the addition of 80 new jobs and the backfilling of sparsely used industrial building Kraft has made Italian cheese at the Tulare facility for years using perhaps one quarter of the space there in a building remodeled for dairy processing after the closing of Louis Rich there in the 1990s. Even with the addition of cultured products to cheese at the Ave. 200 plant, there will still be room for more production along with additional land the company owns along 99, note officials.

For Visalia it will be a loss of another long time food manufacturer that used to be the employment mainstay for the community in earlier years. Early California Foods closed its doors in the 1990s where it once employed over 600 during peak olive season. Today the huge empty plant on Tulare Ave. is being turned into warehousing.

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Last Paramount Citrus Rep Leaves Sunkist Board
Co-Op’s Largest Member On Way Out?

Delano - Former chairman of the board of Sunkist, David Krause has resigned his seat on the Sunkist board this month reports Sunkist spokesperson Claire Smith. “He sent his letter in last week,” says Smith. Sunkist has a board meeting this week, April 19th.

A ten year veteran on the Sunkist board, Krause is president of Paramount Citrus, headquartered in Delano.

Paramount Citrus is the largest orange grower in the US and fully 20% of the volume in the Sunkist cooperative. Krause is the last of what were four Paramount board members that represented Paramount on the Sunkist board until February when three stepped down.

Now Paramount has no representative on the Sunkist board.

The news fuels rampant industry speculation that Paramount is about to leave the Sunkist fold and set an independent course in growing and marketing citrus fruit. The company controls about 30,000 acres of citrus both in the Valley and the Ventura area.

Mr. Krause, who farms in the Orange Cove area, could not be reached for comment.

Paramount joined the Sunkist co-op in the late 1990s boosting its acreage after they purchased Dole Citrus in 2000. The company is owned by LA businessman Stewart Resnick said to be the second largest farm operator in California with over 100,000 acres of citrus, pistachios, almonds and pomegranates. The company recently purchased an additional 15,000 acres north of Fresno.

The citrus company has packing houses in Delano, Visalia and DelRay.

A heavyweight in the farming business, Resnick operates several integrated farming operations, packing and shipping products some with their own brand. Some products are sold under the Sunkist brand as well. Resnick also owns the Franklin Mint and Teleflora - the largest floral clearinghouse in the world.

Besides selling through Sunkist, Paramount has other contracts to sell fruit under different non Sunkist labels including Cutie tangerines with Sun Pacific. This year the company expects to be the largest clementine shipper in the US.

In recent months Paramount representatives on the Sunkist board appeared to lobby hard for a potential change in the governance of the 108 year old cooperative.

Unable to mold Sunkist organization a model he felt more comfortable with, Resnick lost a battle last fall to get the sister organization Fruit Growers Supply to sell their timber lands on a close vote of the FGS board. He has pushed the Sunkist board to consider changing their corporate governance from co-op to a stock ownership organization - an idea that didn’t gain majority support on the 29 member Sunkist board early this year. The resignation of the president, Jeff Gargulaio, followed.

Now the buzz about Paramount Citrus is that they want to back out of the Sunkist co-op something members can do after August of each year. Others say Paramount itself is on the sales block with the likely buyer one of several large independents that have made names for themselves in the central valley citrus business. If that is true it is possible the sale of the company includes no ties with Sunkist.

Sources say Mr. Resnick has been unhappy with the performance of his citrus business unlike the rest of the commodities including pistachios, almonds and pomegranates he has invested in that have brought in high margins.

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VUSD Bond Effort Gears Up This Week

Staff Reports

Visalia - The chance for voters to say yea or nay to Measure M -- VUSD's $41 million bond initiative on the June ballot -- is less than seven weeks away.

In an interview with the Valley Voice last week, VUSD Superintendent Stan Carrizosa said that even voters without kids in school should vote for Measure M because, "We believe that the bond is an essential part of a positive, healthy community."

Glenn Morris, chairman of the bond advocacy group, Friends of Visalia Schools, said parents and other volunteers have begun making phone calls to voters.

Campaign signs are expected to go up within the week.

The school district has prepared a 10 minute informational video on the bond and has shown it at service clubs and staff meetings. The video is also available on the VUSD web site http://www.visalia.k12.ca.us.

Some Visalia Unified staff have criticized the showing of the video at staff meetings.

Golden West teacher Pat Twiford asked, "How is it possible that he [Carrizosa] can force teachers to look at that? Your political beliefs are your own."

But Carrizosa is quick to point out that the bond information disseminated by the school district is "Strictly informational -- not advocacy."

But on the advocacy end, Visalia Unified administrators have put their own personal money where their mouth is. Of the $30,723.31 raised for the advocacy group Friends of Visalia Schools, $5825 has come from individual contributions of school site principals and district administrators.

A $10,000 donation to the Measure M cause was made by Mangini Associates, Inc. and $10,108.18 in payments have been made to William Berry Campaigns -- a political consulting group out of Sacramento.

As of March 17, Friends of Visalia Schools was left with 20,615.13 in their coffers.

The most recent VUSD bond put before voters -- the Measure P bond of 2004Cwas defeated and garnered only a 52.57% vote of the 55% needed to pass.

The $25.6 million Measure P bond included a project for an Olympic-sized pool complex at El Diamante High School.

District advisory committees have since taken "a realistic conservative approach" to modernization and construction projects, according to Carrizosa.

The last bond to pass in Visalia Unified was Measure G in a special election of April 1999. The $42.5 million in Measure G Funds went toward improving facilities and buying property with speculation as to where growth might occur in the city.

One property purchased with Measure G funds was on North Mooney Blvd. and was intended for a fourth middle school.

The North Mooney Blvd. location has since been sold and the surplus money from that sale has been directed to pay for a less extravagant El Diamante High School pool than what was intended with Measure P.

According to Carrizosa, "The pool was originally a Measure G expense," and the Facilities Advisory Committee decided a pool the same size as the other high schools would suffice.

Carrizosa emphasized that the list of proposed bond projects in line for the $41 million Measure M bond is "a necessity list, not a wish list."

The last day to register to vote for the June 6 election is Monday, May 22.

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Visalia - The calendar year 2006 has been a wet one for much of California including Visalia with nearly 10 inches of rain falling from January through mid April. Historically the same period sees six to seven inches of precipitation through April on average. So far this April we have seen more than three inches - the wettest April this decade. Put it down to a plunge to the south of the jet stream flow into central California from its usual location in the Pacific Northwest. Still, our neck of the valley has gotten off with far less damage than the north San Joaquin Valley.

Tulare and Kings counties were added last week to Governor Schwarzenegger's State of Emergency declaration that frees up some public monies to shore up levees that protect public and private property. That action set in motion a request made by Central Valley congressmen to the President (April 14) to consider a federal declaration of emergency if the Governor requests it.

The forecast through the rest of the month calls for drier weather with temperatures closing in to the low 80s, but with more precipitation coming with hopes for a normal and controlable snow melt. Valley reservoirs have had to dump the torrent of flood waters to make room for the growing spring snowmelt. On the upper Kaweah the snowpack is said to be above 200 percent of normal. On April 15 at Kaweah Gap, there was some 73 inches of water content compared to 67 inches April 15 a year ago – also a good water year. Potential damage from snowpack above Millerton Lake appears to be a bigger problem with four times as much snowmelt as the reservoir can hold.

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Visalia - The Visalia city council this week approved an agreement with Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District to divert stream water east of town along the Mill Creek system before they enter the city that allows a temporary diversion of storm waters upstream of town in flood control basins. The move will allow the city to divert flood water in the streets of Visalia into Mill Creek when needed - a key problem during recent heavy storm events when the city flooded in portions of the community. The city has had to mandate homebuilders construct storm basins not connected to the creek system to handle flood water because Mill Creek is sometimes close to overflowing from all the water coming from the east.

Also this week council approved a deal with Modoc Ditch Co. to use one of their unused catch basins off Demaree owned by the ditch company to handle Visalia's storm water runoff and will excavate it to hold up to a 50 year storm. That could possibly avert flooding in the northwest part of town that was hit by this year's heavy rainfall events.

"These are very significant deals," says city manager Steve Salomon.

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Visalia - This week the Visalia city council voted to expand the planning area by about half in east Visalia enlarging the boundaries to Houston Ave. and east to Cain. The city asked two consultant groups to study a permanent water supply for the proposed civic center area centered at Mill Creek and Jennings Ditch that will likely include a lake as well as study a possible relocation of the city corporation yard across Ben Maddox.

A staff report notes one feature of the water contract with consultants Provost and Pritchard Engineering would be to advise the city about a permanent water supply for the creeks and recharge basin that will be a key feature of east downtown that would include a year round water circulation system. That could put water in Mill Creek in the late summer months when it is often dry. Although they haven't decided how the buildings will be laid out the city wants to begin their investment in an infrastructure now, says city manager Steve Salomon.

On the planning front, Race Studios will carry out a plan to come up with a preferred concept that may include the redevelopment of the city corporation yard as a part of the ambitious east Visalia plan that before now stopped at Ben Maddox.

In the near term, Visalia city manager Steve Salomon says the city is close to going out to bid on construction of Oak St. east to Tipton and construction of two parking lots along Oak. Salomon expects new parking lots at the northeast corner of Santa Fe and Oak and at Tipton and Oak to be built when the street is completed in front of the new chamber building.

In addition, the city appears closer to picking a location for a new senior tower residential project in east Visalia similar to the project and is selecting a site likely not far from the city's transfer center.

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Visalia - The Visalia city council appears ready to approve development plans along West 198 at two locations east of Shirk if they can come up with a compromise plan adjacent Highway 198 to leave land in open space, water recharge or ag type uses.

But uncertainty over just what plan to put forward is holding up projects that have been patiently waiting for one or more years already.

Just east of Akers next to the family fun center, Sierra Village is looking to expand its school, retirement village and build a skilled nursing facility even as the city seeks to push Cypress Street to the west to Roeben. There appears to be agreement that Sierra Village should be allowed to expand south of Cypress. But from the street to the highway, a majority on council want to keep part of this area green.

Just what amount of development within this strip area - about 19 acres - should be allowed is up for debate. The original plan was to put offices on a nine acre parcel owned by Dr. Billys who has piggybacked with Sierra Village to get approval on this development plan.

Council member Greg Collins says he would like to have these 19 acres be part of the ag enterprise zone he is proposing for much of the corridor allowing a small percentage of development with 90% in ag or open space. Other council members think some office space should be OK. One plan is relocate a ponding basin on the Central Valley Christian School campus to this area - an idea everyone seems to support but appears too expensive at $900,000. "That's a lot of money to dig a hole and move it from one place to another," says council member Don Landers, a skeptic of the ag enterprise zone idea.

Representative of the village Quad Knopf consultant Steven Peck told the council that the village would be glad to do a land swap "but we have no bag of money" to do the ponding basin. Peck pressed the council to finally make up their minds and agree on a plan for the land north of Cypress so the village expansion everyone agrees is OK can proceed.

In the same meeting council heard a plea by subdivision builder Lennar to build a 64 lot subdivision just east of Shirk in the city limits north of Hillsdale alignment north of a 600 strip on land zoned agriculture or conservation. The applicant wants to get the city to allow the subdivision map to move forward without letting the issue of the ponding basin the subdivision needs slow it down. The city staff had suggested putting the basin adjacent to the freeway. But some council members suggested putting the basin next to Hillsdale and leaving about 13 acres along the freeway open to ag.

Along West 198 east of Shirk and north of the highway, the city has had a conservation/ag zone in place for years. Collins says the agreement came in the early 90s when he was on the council and "they split the baby" in a compromise over whether to allow development between Akers and Shirk.

Now property owner, the Kaprielian family, is left with some of their land available for residential use north of Hillsdale alignment and some in ag zoning. Ag Enterprise supporters like "the two Gregs" as some call them, want a master agreement along the whole stretch that keeps the 600 ft or so strip in ag in this area. Between Shirk and the houses closer to Akers there would be 500 to 600 ft strip of land zoned for ag enterprise, about 40 acres altogether. It appears there is majority support for this idea although some property owners could use these land restrictions as a test case for a constitutional challenge some believe.

The developer in this case won't have to wait long to see if a compromise will allow their subdivision to move forward. The matter comes April 24 to city council following the same night by the planning commission to see if both bodies bless the plan.

Some believe property owners along the corridor will fight the idea of an ag enterprise zone unless the plan offers them some increased compensation other than outlined by Greg Collins currently. Greg Kirkpatrick has suggested an ag enterprise zone might offer a land exchange easement that could provide some relief for property owners who are mandated to keep their lands in ag along the corridor and a new city policy on annexations could provide at least some funding source.

Critics of an ag enterprise idea led by council member Don Landers believe the impacts of production farming mixed with subdivisions as they are in this particular strip will sorely test the model Collins and Kirkpatrick are pushing. Right in this strip, for example, are walnuts that when it comes to shaking time in fall will spew dust nearby. "That's going to be the true test of your ag enterprise zone."

The city has hired a consultant firm to work with them on how any ag enterprise zone might work and that's why they don't want to nail down just what uses will be allowed there for now.

Just how all this will shake out we may not know for awhile. It has been shown while there is support for an ag enterprise zone sometimes mayor Jesus Gamboa is on the fence making it likely there could be a compromise version on how all this works. Gamboa joined others on the council in approving the plan by Orthopaedic Associates to build a medical facility on Plaza at 198 a few weeks ago on the other side of the question from "the two Gregs."

Something new on the corridor is the hiring of former Tulare World Expo chief Gary Shultz this week to advise the city how to bring in more ag business to Visalia both on the events side and on corporate relocation business. Potentially Shultz could help convince some farm based company to build an office along the corridor to complement an ag enterprise zone.

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Tulare County - January through April cycle of warm, then cold, then wet weather has caused a rough estimate of $13 million in damage in the county, says Tulare County Agricultural Commissioner Gary Kunkel. "January was unusually warm followed by a freeze in February that may have hurt the fruit tree crop," says Kunkel. "We believe the fruit set may be down but we don't know how bad yet," he says.

The wet weather in March and April along with some hail has piled on the damage that could have been worse suggests Kunkel, with his eye to flood damage seen in the north valley. "Early cherries were definitely hurt by the freeze, but the later varieties appear to be OK."

The wet weather has made it impossible to get into the fields for planting cotton or harvesting hay with Kunkel expecting a short season in cotton will mean reduced yields. Hay prices are up as dairymen have trouble getting supplies with all the rain.

Kunkel notes that the 2005 crop report will be released in coming weeks with the dollar value as always - highly dependent on how well dairy farmers are doing. "We live and die on the price of milk," says Kunkel. Dairymen are seeing milk checks around $10 per cwt – with the likelihood that the net will be below the cost of production for awhile. That makes it unlikely Tulare County could overtake Fresno County in 2006 as the nation's number one ag producing county.

Kunkel advises that the wet winter and spring will likely mean an increased crop of mosquitos this year with precautions to reduce standing water the best advice. "West Nile is here," he notes and this year may be a bad one.

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Tulare - A strategic planning session will take place later this week focusing on the possible creation of a second hospital campus for the Tulare HealthCare District. The project, proposed as a joint venture between TDH and local doctors, could lead to the relocation of outpatient services to a new campus that would be built on four acres TDH owns adjacent to Evolutions, at 1425 East Prosperity Ave.

Meanwhile, the hospital continues to move forward with plans to build a new 90,000-square-foot, multi-story tower at its existing site. The expansion, funded by a bond measure, includes a state-of-the-art, 24-bed emergency room.

"We're talking about building an outpatient surgery center," said TDH spokesman Rick Elkins. "We could do imaging, lab work and outpatient surgery all at one site. Nothing is set in stone yet," Elkins added. "We're looking at the market and trying to project what the demand 15 years down the road will be."

Elkins said bond money would not be used for the proposed satellite project.

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