This image, provided by Amazon, shows the e-commerce fulfillment center in the North Valley community of Patterson.

An old adage notes the three most important factors in real estate: Location, location, location.

For e-commerce businesses, that has been particularly true, as companies find it increasingly important to build distribution, or “fulfillment,” centers close to highways and major urban markets so merchandise ordered online can be delivered within a day or two.

That was a key part of the reason Amazon.com officials decided to build their newest fulfillment center in Fresno.

But before that announcement came, Fresno Mayor Lee Brand already had announced that part of his proposed $1.13 billion budget for the city will include funding an economic development plan to promote the area around Highways 99 and 41 as a site for large manufacturing and e-commerce businesses.

“Fresno already has a lot going for it to draw e-commerce businesses, including affordable land, a central locale in the state and proximity to major freeway corridors and California’s major urban centers, a cheap labor base, cheap water, cheap energy and good weather,” Brand told reporters last month.

Building infrastructure
And part of his proposal is to get power, water, sewage and gas lines built around the site, as well as putting in streets, curbs, storm drains and other infrastructure so the area will be ready to accommodate any new businesses that build there.

The following week, the city of Chowchilla announced its own plans to draw e-fulfillment centers and industrial businesses to 2,000 acres of privately-owned parcels in the area of 99 and Highway 152.

The “Specific Plan,” which is being developed by urban design and engineering company QK, is described in a city press release as a “a blueprint for future development [that] will provide for major wet and dry utilities, types of industries compatible with the region, location and design of future roads, access to multimodal transportation, architectural guidelines for the region, proximity to public safety, and more.

“The city is looking for businesses that have value-added jobs, like processing plants” that require skilled workers who would have incomes more than minimum wage, said Chowchilla City Manager Brian Haddix.

Ideal conditions
City leaders also wants fulfillment centers that pay well and offer job security because e-commerce is a growing industry, he noted.

“They need fairly inexpensive land, they need to be close to their customer base, they need to be close to where their materials are coming in from, they need superior transportation routes,” all of which Chowchilla can offer, Haddix said, noting that his city not only is just about center between Southern and Northern California, but Highway 152 offers good access to the Bay Area.

Amazon already has fulfillment centers in Tracy and Patterson as well as in the Inland Empire down south.

Time for the Valley
As for why the online giant is coming here only just now, in the past Amazon located its fulfillment centers near major urban centers, but as the industry has evolved, getting goods to customers in one or two days has become an increasingly important component in the industry, said Buk Wagner, senior vice president of industrial real estate for Colliers International’s Fresno office.

And from Fresno, Amazon can get packages to most any place in California — as well as to parts of Arizona and Nevada — in a day by ground transport, which is cheaper than shipping items by air.

Most Central Valley communities share geographically good locales for distribution centers, though Wagner said that most companies looking to launch such businesses here tend to focus primarily on Fresno and Visalia.

“They just won’t look to Chowchilla unless they have a heavy route north.”

Competition heating up
Martin Boone, a Santa Cruz-based developer who has spent the last 15 years working on projects in the Valley, said he’s perplexed distribution businesses haven’t flocked to the Chowchilla area, considering its central spot along the 99 corridor and its proximity to 152.

“For whatever reason, the city is not being aggressive enough in negotiations. They lose to other cities,” Boone speculated. “To me, you take something like Chowchilla and Madera, I don’t understand that. They’re so perfect, and they’re not drawing [these businesses].”

Landing Amazon is a tall feather in Fresno’s cap given the amount of competition for such facilities in an area that is within three hours of 30 million people. With brick-and-mortar stores closing, e-commerce is quickly rising as the modern retail model, and municipalities want pieces of those businesses.

Visalia and Tulare County officials have long seen the writing on the wall and have successfully drawn distribution centers that have brought with them about 2,500 jobs.

Ahead of the game
In the 1990s, Best Buy opened a distribution center in Dinuba for supplying its stores, and in 2004 it expanded the facility into a fulfillment center for its online orders, which employs about 1,500 people — approximately the same number expected to work at Fresno’s Amazon facility.

Tulare County also is home to a distribution center in Porterville supplying Walmart stores, and Visalia has distribution centers for Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores, VF Outdoor Distribution, and VWR, the latter a global supplier of scientific equipment, lab supplies and furniture.

“We’ve been marketing to that particular industry group for some time,” Paul Saldana, president and CEO of the Tulare County Economic Development Corp., said of distribution businesses.

Related services thriving too
In fact, one business that has located a distribution center in Visalia is OnTrac Shipping, a sort of scaled-down FedEx that does deliveries for clients that include Amazon and other e-commerce distributors in eight western states, Saldana noted.

And recently, the city of Visalia passed a package of incentives as it competed with Fresno for Nordstrom’s fulfillment center for online orders, though the department store chain last year announced it was putting those plans on hold to focus on its brick-and-mortar stores.

Wagner said that Fresno might have gained the interest of Amazon a few years ago if it had infrastructure in place for the new facility, which will allow construction to start sooner. And experts have said that having infrastructure installed was key to Ulta Beauty announcing in March its plans to build its first California distribution center at the northeast corner of East and Central Avenues in Southeast Fresno.

Fresno is making waves
The Ulta and Amazon announcements have put Fresno on the map for shipping centers, Wagner said. Haddix said Chowchilla and other Valley communities likely will benefit from this, as businesses looking to locate such businesses in Fresno are likely to also look at nearby communities.

“It brings attention to the Valley, and one begins to say, ‘Maybe the Valley is more than farming,’” he said.

During a visit to Fresno recently, Sen. Diane Feinstein was asked how the city might draw new industries here, and she told a crowd “You have to promote, promote, promote.”

This includes having city officials looking out for businesses that might be looking to relocate or start up and phoning or paying visits to the shot callers to rally interest in Fresno, she said.

“Let Apple know what you can offer if they want to manufacture here instead of overseas,” the senator said. “See what they need, and see if you can put it together.”