A roughly 1,650-acre expanse of mostly almond orchards in northwest Bakersfield will soon be marketed for industrial development under a so-called megasite proposal expected to carry on Kern County's shift from oil and ag to greater employment in distribution centers and possibly manufacturing.
Farmer Keith Gardiner's plan to sell developers parts of what's known as Rosedale Ranch would put the site in direct competition with a similarly sized logistics center The Wonderful Co. owns to the immediate north. The project would also compete with the Tejon Ranch Commerce Center near the foot of the Grapevine.
Previously proposed to become a master-planned residential community but now zoned for industrial use, the property is bounded by 7th Standard Road on the north, Kratzmeyer Road to the south, Zerker Road on the east and the BNSF Railway to the east.
Any new owners would have to put in substantial investment and years of work to install necessary roads and utility infrastructure, but once that's done the project would continue a trend that's been building in Kern County for several years as distribution and warehousing developers run out of affordable real estate in Southern California.
"It's not surprising, given the kind of momentum that's been building already, that someone else would want to add to the supply side of the coin," said local industrial property specialist Wayne Kress, an executive director with Cushman & Wakefield.
Gardiner, noting the almond industry has slumped in recent years, has been working with city officials and New York-based real estate advisory and services firm Newmark Group Inc. to get the property ready for industrial development.
"To my knowledge, there isn't a site like this in California or the Western United States that has cleared all the environmental studies. It's basically shovel-ready," he said, adding the property is undergoing appraisal now.
He envisions logistics and maybe manufacturing activity on the land, or given its proximity to the railroad, possibly a transload facility that would load truck-borne shipping containers from California's seaports directly onto a train for delivery elsewhere in the United States.
Water and electricity-supply issues remain to be worked out, Gardiner said, noting he has already heard from a data center developer who needed more power than he could provide.
"They want up to 500 to 1,000 megawatts of power, and that's tough to get," he said.
Bakersfield Assistant City Manager Gary Hallen said Newmark was brought in to study what the city, Gardiner and his family need to do to make the site marketable as being ready for large-scale development likely to measure in the tens of millions of square feet.