Proposed expansion of Wonderful industrial park would reshape Shafter

Yahoo

17-05-2025

The distribution-center boom remaking Kern County's economy would transform Shafter under The Wonderful Co.'s plans to almost double the size of its existing industrial park in the area and add a housing development that could expand the city's population by more than 40%.
Wonderful's dual proposal is expected to go before the Shafter City Council in the first half of next year for approval of an environmental review and a rezoning that would turn what are now almond orchards into million-plus-square-foot warehouses and multi-generational homes.
Already the Los Angeles-based company has made a number of supportive investments, such as a logistics training facility, an employee wellness center and a cargo transfer depot.
A guiding priority of the project is to avoid the kind of development that has plagued distribution center development in the Inland Empire, where warehouses operating near homes and schools have worsened pollution and traffic. Wonderful's approach has been to master-plan its work in Shafter, separating distribution centers from housing and including community amenities.
Shafter's new city manager, Lance Lippincott, credits Wonderful for engaging as it has with the community "instead of just pushing it forward." He sees the company's development proposals as ambitious and potentially helpful in that it would turn farmland that now generates little tax revenue into a more financially supportive asset.
The company's vision is not without critics, though. An environmental justice group with which Wonderful engaged for more than two years has spoken up in opposition, citing diesel emissions and traffic impacts, since talks between the two organizations were put on hold earlier this year.
Wonderful nevertheless hopes to win public support, including by institutionalizing community reinvestment with a 2 cents-per-square-foot monthly tax on new warehouse space. The levy would contribute an estimated $240,000 annually, per warehouse, to be spent at the direction of Shafter's publicly elected parks and recreation district board.
If it succeeds, the company would build on the lead it maintains over competing distribution centers north and south of Bakersfield. It would accelerate the county's continuing shift from employment in oil and agriculture to a career that generally pays less than $30,000 per year but offers advancement opportunities and an introduction to advanced technology.
The Wonderful executive leading the effort, former Shafter City Manager John Guinn, acknowledged that warehouse development in California has been done poorly. What's different this time, he said, is that company owners Stewart and Lynda Resnick see an opportunity to pull off a community improvement project the scale of which local government cannot.
"Their priority is to try to address poverty in the Central Valley," he said. "This is an avenue for them (the Resnicks) to do that."
The company has partnered with Bakersfield College and Shafter High School to train future warehouse workers to maintain and repair machinery including robots that now do much of the work in the area's advanced warehousing operations. Its 40,000-square-foot career center prepares students to work for Amazon, Walmart and Wonderful's other Fortune 500 tenants in Shafter.
The training facility is just one of the company's large investments in place or underdevelopment. Its wellness center at the existing Wonderful Logistics Center provides free health care to its employees, and nearby there's a restaurant offering healthy, subsidized meals to Wonderful employees and those of the center's distribution-center tenants.
At the heart of the company's proposal is a plan to expand its existing, 1,600-acre industrial park, which now employs an estimated 13,000 people. Its goal is to add 1,300 acres comprising 21 million square feet of warehouses.
Other Wonderful investments that are part of the distribution hub are designed to maximize efficiencies involved in moving products to and from ports in Southern California.
One that opened in January at a temporary site within the complex is a container depot allowing importers to drop off empty shipping containers for use by the region's agricultural exporters. By Wonderful's estimate, the operation cuts the number of miles trucks must travel by 42%.
A separate facility planned to open in the first quarter of next year is a rail-served inland port that will measure 134 acres. Its purpose is to receive containers, place them on a chassis and send them to a warehouse within the park, where it will be unloaded and returned to the rail facility.
Also connected to the existing BNSF Railway railroad will be a five-acre cold storage facility handling refrigerated shipments of meat and other goods from the Midwest. The project is allowed by right and won't require the city council's approval.
North of the industrial park Wonderful proposes to develop up to 3,500 new single-family homes on 650 acres a mile east of downtown Shafter. The company said the homes, designed in consultation with community focus groups, will be affordable for the center's workers but not government-subsidized.
Designed to accommodate multiple generations of family on the same property, the housing would come with a walking and bicycling path, sports center and a plaza where gatherings would take place. Neighborhood-serving retail is expected to be part of the residential development.
The projects' primary skeptic is the Center on Race, Poverty & The Environment, the activist group that has worked with Wonderful to ensure the community benefits from the logistics park expansion and housing projects.
CRPE Associate Director Gustavo Aguirre said the company paused the talks in March after earlier promising not to proceed with the project until an agreement related to the warehouse tax was finalized. But after the company moved forward with an application to expand the industrial park, Aguirre said, CRPE may formally oppose the project.
Aguirre said Shafter residents would rather not see the park expanded, partly because it would move focus away from the city's downtown area and partly because of the greater pollution. But if the expansion does go forward, he said, Wonderful officials "should do something above and beyond what the law requires of them."
Wonderful said the pause in talks with CRPE is temporary as the company learns more about what the project will involve through the environmental review process.