The area roughly shaded red is an industrial development being planned by Leland Parnagian west of Highway 99 in Goshen. Google Earth image

Visalia may get some new competition for warehouse space locally.

For the first time, developers are targeting land west of Highway 99 on the outskirts of Goshen for future industrial growth. This field crop ag land is being promoted for its proximity to Highways 99 and 198 — key arteries for a logistics industry that is already filling up the Visalia Industrial Park. Developers have millions of square feet on the drawing board for hundreds of Visalia acres.

Now it is Tulare County looking to cash-in by rezoning land south and west of Goshen for warehouses with the initial step taken this week by the Planning Commission.

Leading the charge on this project is Fresno developer Leland Parnagian and his G4 Enterprises Ltd company. Parnagian already has two large warehouse projects in the Visalia Industrial Park including the 790,000-square-foot Midstate 99 and a new 316,000-square-foot spec building nearing completion at Kelsey Street south of Goshen Avenue.

Now Parnagian wants to rezone two parcels totaling 80 acres that he purchased at the southwest corner of Avenue 304 and Road 68, south of Goshen. There he needs approval to designate all of the 80 acres that was not zoned industrial when the Goshen Community Plan was adopted.

The Wednesday evening agenda item requiring a General Plan Amendment now goes to the Board of Supervisors for final approval, says Mike Washam, county economic development manager.

If the General Plan Amendment is approved, the Goshen Urban Development Boundary would be realigned to fully include both parcels as studied in the 2018 Goshen Community Plan Update, says a staff report.

Big plans

The applicant has provided a conceptual site plan that shows four buildings for a warehouse/office, two of which are approximately 500,000 square feet in size and two of which are approximately 110,000 square feet in size. They total around 1.25 million square feet.

The site plan includes parking spaces for 2,200 vehicles as well as two ponding basins.

If the jobs created from this project is in the 1,500-2,000 range, that would be enough to employ a member of each of the 1,400 households in this largely low-income community. The Highway 99 town just north of Visalia is already experiencing a retail /highway commercial boom of sorts along Betty Drive.

The County staff report on the rezone says the Road 68/Avenue 304 property was intended for rezoning but was inadvertently “split zoned” due to uncertainty about development capacity and property owner interest that was not rectified before the Plan was adopted in 2018. This left 30 acres of the 80 acres still zoned as AE-40, or agriculture use. These conditions have been alleviated by certain critical improvements to allow a rezone to go forward.

Less water demand

These improvements include the County currently planning for expanding nearby Road 64 that already connects to Highway 198, with project design and environmental review already completed. The Goshen Community Service District has a “new” pump station in place that limited previous development west of Highway 99. All water capacity and groundwater management concerns are addressed by the Goshen EIR and Cal Water’s will-serve letter requirements at the time of development.

The County says rezoning this farmland to industrial will result in less water demand than currently — an argument to be made in favor of designating more land west of Highway 99 for warehouses if this project takes off.

Smee Homes has already pioneered new home development west of the freeway helping to fund Road 64 improvement — something the Parnagian property development will do as well.

Future growth?

Will this new industrial project spread into a new industrial park or be one-off? The real-estate agent who sold the land in May to Parnagian, Marc Griffiths of Zeeb Commercial, says it “makes a lot of sense” for more industrial development to happen in this area “so close to 99,” adding that “industrial demand remains high.”

The County is inviting more industrial investment at the bookends of the county as you enter Tulare County from Delano heading north and from the Fresno County border and Kingsburg to the south. Looking to attract warehouse development on former ag land, the county has rezoned well over 100 acres.

And there is more new competition for Visalia.

In Tulare, a Chicago developer has purchased 76 acres at Paige and South I streets with plans for up to a million square feet of spec buildings, as reported in the Sept. 23 print edition of The Business Journal. The company is called CA Industrial. They hope to break ground in December.