GREAT WOLF & BLD WILL LURE MILLION A YEAR TO MANTECA – Manteca Bulletin

Great Wolf is opening a month ahead of schedule.

The biggest hotel ever built in the Great Central Valley aswell as Northern Californias first indoor water park will now open July 1.

Great Wolf Resorts Chief Executive Officer Murray Hennessymade the announcement Wednesday before the start of a sneak preview hard hattour of the $180 million complex that includes the signature 95,000-square-footindoor water park, 45,000-square-foot family entertainment center complete withrestaurants, and amusements, a 500-room hotel, and a 12,000-square-footconference center.

Great Wolf is a game changer for Manteca, Mayor Ben Cantutold the gathering that donned hard hats with wolf ears attached. The worldwill be coming to Manteca.

That may not be as big of a superlative as it sounds.

Hennessy underscored the fact Great Wolf expects the Mantecalocation to make a big splash when it open which is why it was built with thelargest water park it has among 18 locations.

BLD already attracts 500,000

people to Manteca, Great Wolf

will lure 500,000 more a year

The firm is marketing the Manteca Great Wolf in someinstances as the San Francisco Great Wolf given it is on the Highway 120 Bypassthat is traveled by the large chunk of the 4.1 million annual visitors fromaround the country and the world opting to visit Yosemite that work their tripto the national park in with a stay in San Francisco.

Before the Manteca Waterslides that were just over a mile tothe southwest from the front entrance of the 29-acre resort that you will beable to access in five months by turning on Great Wolf Way off the extension ofDaniels Street closed, a large share of its summer business were touristsstopping on their way back from Yosemite.

Great Wolf is also planning to build off the synergy ofbeing across the street from the Big League Dreams sports complex. The sixreplica baseball fields have been booked solid on every weekend since opening12 years ago and is the most successful BLD site in terms of play and revenue.

BLD lures more than 500,000 people a year to Manteca. Thatsthe same number Great Wolf is projecting will book rooms at the resort on anannual basis.

But while the water park that will eventually offer daypasses in addition to the two-day water park use that comes with booking roomsthat start at $199 for six people has been garnering a lot of attention for itsexpected economic impacts on Manteca, it has another component that will alsoserve to vault the city into a major destination in the Northern CaliforniaMegaregion a 12,000-square-foot conference center.

It includes a main ballroom that can be split in thirds orused as a large venue that has a capacity of 360 people in a classroom seating,450 people in a banquet configuration, and 600 for theater-style seating.Additional smaller spaces means Great Wolf with the right mixture of bookedevents can accommodate over 900 people at one time.

Great Wolf gives Manteca 2nd

largest conference center foot

print in one spit in Northern SJ Valley

That makes it the second largest conference-style center interms of available space in the same location in the Northern San JoaquinValley after the Modesto Centre Plaza.

The Manteca Great Wolf will have an outdoor pavilion as wellmaking it one of only two locations. The other is at the Great Wolf in Grapevine, Texas. One of the biggest users ofthe pavilion is expected to be events such as competitions staged by VarsityCheer that has an established working relationship with Great Wolf.

The conference center will have its own separate entrancegiven that events often attracts many attendees that have not booked rooms atthe hotel.

At other locations the conference center at Great Wolf hascreated a demand for booking nearby hotel rooms.

That means Great Wolf besides generating room taxes thatin the initial year Manteca will receive $2 million in a split that changesafter 10 years more in the citys favor and then goes 100 percent to the city will be staging events that will help fill other hotel rooms in Manteca. Allhotel rooms are assessed a 12 percent per night room tax that goes to thecitys general fund.

The city and Great Wolf split the first 9 percent of theroom tax while the balance a 3 percent increased approved by voters on allhotel rooms after Great Wolf signed the deal to locate in Manteca goes all tothe city.

Manteca expects to pocket

$129.1 million in taxes from

Great Wolf in next 25 years

Manteca expects to incur $350,000 annually in providingnon-user fee based city services to Great Wolf such as police and fire.Subtracted from the $592,000 in property and sales taxes the city will receivein addition to its share of the room taxes, it would provide a net flow of$242,000 yearly into the general fund. That is on top of the $2 millionannually in room taxes to help fund general city services and $123,000 yearlyfor Measure M public safety positions.

From all sources for the general fund after one full year ofoperations the city will pocket $2,242,000.

After 10 years, Mantecas share of the original 9 cents onthe dollar room tax increases to 75 percent. Starting in the 26thyear the room tax sharing deal ends and all money goes to the city.

The original analysis of the deal projected Manteca wouldnet $99.1 million during the first 30 years Great Wolf is open. Thanks to thevoter approval of a measure that took the room tax up to 12 percent from 9percent, the figure is now $129.1 million as all of the increase goes to thecity.

That means the city will have parlayed a $20,200 investment the amount Manteca paid in 1973 for the 29 acres they sold to Great Wolf forthe resort into $129.1 million.

Manteca 15 years ago realized there was a demand forconference space to serve the greater region as companies such as Verizon andelectronic firms that had operations in San Jose, Sacramento, San Francisco andeven Fresno were looking for a midway spot to bring personal together.Existing hotels had space capped out at 50 or so people. The Convention &Visitors Bureau had a number of requests for larger venues but could only offersocial halls during the week. Firms were looking for larger hotel-styleconference centers.

Great Wolf hopes to capitalize on that market by takingadvantage of Mantecas location. They also cater to wedding receptions andother events.

The Manteca location will have 500 year-round jobs of which250 will be full-time. In addition there could be up to 100 more seasonal jobs.More than 2,000 distinct workers have or are working on site to build theresort.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, emaildwyatt@mantecabulletin.com

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GREAT WOLF & BLD WILL LURE MILLION A YEAR TO MANTECA - Manteca Bulletin