Fresno County,
eager to attract jobs, aims to foster industrial growth after earlier efforts
stall

By Tim Sheehan

An
on-again, off-again effort by Fresno County to encourage development for
industrial projects – and the jobs they can provide – could be back on again
with the encouragement of the Board of Supervisors.

Plans for
the county to develop an industrial park have been floated around the halls of
county government for at least a decade, but have gone nowhere. In 2006 and
2007, supervisors hired a real-estate consultant with an eye toward searching
for about 1,000 acres of land as a regional industrial park. But that effort
stalled in 2008, when a proposal to secure options to purchase land was pulled
from the board’s agenda, never to resurface.

On Tuesday,
public works and planning director Steven White described a different strategy
to supervisors that doesn’t involve the county getting into the real estate
business. Instead, the county can use its zoning and land-use rules, and work
with cities throughout Fresno County, to make it more attractive to property
owners to cooperate with would-be industrial developers in creating an
industrial area that can be marketed to companies.

Getting the
ownership of the land in our possession is not necessary.

Steven
White, Fresno County’s director of public works and planning

“It’s a
low-cost alternative,” White said. “Getting the ownership of the land in our
possession is not necessary. You can partner with the property owner as long as
they’re agreeable to it. … Then let the property owner, if they
choose to sell to a commercial developer or something else, reap the benefit of
the land they actually own.”

In a report
to the supervisors, deputy planning director Bernard Jimenez said the
department has focused its efforts on three areas where there is plentiful land
with good access to transportation, water and sewer services: the communities
of Malaga and Calwa, both on the outskirts of Fresno, and the Golden State
Boulevard corridor reaching from the south end of Fresnothrough the cities of
Fowler, Selma and Kingsburg.

Supervisor
Andreas Borgeas said he’s pleased to see the discussion of an industrial park
revived languishing for years.

“Every day
that we’re not moving forward, we’re missing out,” he added.

Other areas
of Fresno County should not be ignored, Supervisor Nathan Magsig said. Those
include the western reaches of the Interstate 5 corridor and along Highway 180.

Supervisors
took no formal action Tuesday toward industrial development. But the planning
staff will likely return to the board later this year with more specific
recommendations for site-selection criteria, land-use zoning and infrastructure
availability.

Read more
here: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/business/article146959094.html#storylink=cpy