Clovis-based Provost & Pritchard Consulting Group has purchased the former Visalia Community Bank building in Downtown Visalia and is remodeling it for its new offices here.The 13,000sf multi-story building at Floral and Center features a 25 car parking garage attached.Donald Ikemiya, Chief Strategy officer for the long time company says the big space will offer room for up to 60, allowing continued expansion of the mult-discipline development company.”We have over 40 employees in Visalia now, but we are running out of room” at their leased office at Garden and Main Street.
Visalia Community Bank merged with Central Valley Community Bank a few years back and decided to relocate their Downtown Visalia offices from Floral to Center and Locust and put the old building up for sale, Today that bank has again merged and carries the name Community West Bank at 126 W Center.
Launched as a partnership of engineers Jim Provost and Paul Pritchard in Fresno in 1968, the company has grown to include civil engineering, agricultural solutions, water resources management, environmental consulting, structural engineering, roof consulting and design, hydrogeology, GIS, surveying, caves and tunnels expertise, planning, biological studies, and construction management.
Clients include those busy in agriculture and irrigation, public works, and the private sector. The company is well known in farming circles and Ikemiya looks forward to hosting clients at the new location with free city parking across the street. The building will include large conference rooms and a plan for an outside deck. The company is busy in the Visalia Industrial Park as well having worked for the development firm CapRock to bring in the two Amazon centers now located here.
Ikemiya says there are also plans to paint a mural along the alley to the rear of the building and expects to continue to allow the Tulare County Symphony to use the underground parking garage for their shows at the Fox Theater.Also our plans to retain the old bank vault as a printer room.
Provost & Pritchard Consulting Group has locations in Bakersfield, Visalia, Clovis,Modesto,Sacramento, Sonora, Los Banos, Chico, Boise Idaho and San Luis Obispo. The firm sports 300 employees in 9 offices.
“Although we have been part of downtown Visalia for a long time now, we will now be owning our office here. It’s an easy ride from anywhere to our new office and once you get here you can walk everywhere” notes Ikemiya.
Ikemiya sas he expects the remodel of the building at 120N Floral should be complete and ready for occupancy by April 2025.
Downtown Visalia is also home to other significant development firms including 4Creeks, Teter and Qk. As much as Visalia is the ag and banking headquarters for Tulare County,Downtown is also home to hundreds of skilled professionals who help guide development for the farm,dairy, water, civic and industrial sectors for the region.
What was the biggest building project in Tulare County in 2023?
The largest building project in Tulare County last year (by far) was valued at $468 million and involved construction of a ground mounted solar project near Richgrove called Rexford Solar Farm.The two phase project sprawls over nearly 5000 acres and will produce 1200MW of solar power and 1200MW of battery storage. The solar farm is said to be the largest in the nation.
The huge dollar value rivals the building of the 33-mile Friant Kern Canal replacement estimated to be costing $500 million.By contrast the million sq ft Amazon buildings in Visalia came in around $100 million each and the new Visalia Civic Center built on 33 acres in east Visalia, is estimated to cost about $107 million.
Visalia new home construction lags while multi-family is up
Latest snapshot of building activity through August in Visalia published by the city shows new home construction down 19% from the year before permitting 195 single-family homes versus 240 during the same eight months of 2023.
On the other hand, multifamily construction is way up, permitting 323 apartments so far this year compared to just 19 during the same period 2023. The value of the single family home construction is $63 million through August while the value of the multifamily is nearly as much at $60 million.
Low interest rates may stimulate more building activity in Visalia going forward but so far this summer the monthly building numbers are lower each month than the 2023 numbers.In Tulare County, San Joaquin Valley homes is the busiest builder this year.
It’s taking longer to sell a home
The latest report from the Tulare County Association of Realtors shows that it is taking longer to sell single-family homes in the county than in past years. In August 2024 it’s taking 11% longer compared to the same month and two years ago it’s 110% longer, says the report. As of this August it’s taking over 45 days to market and sell a single-family home in Tulare County. In August 2022 it took just 22 days.
Tulare County home sales per month are down from around 350 in Aug 2021 to under 250 this last month.
Zeeb merges with Pearson
Visalia-based Zeeb Commercial Real Estate will merge with Fresno’s largest commercial broker Pearson Realty,the two companies announced recently. Zeeb Commercial Real Estate was founded in 1986 by Marty Zeeb.
The number of births at Kaweah Health in Visalia were down in the Covid years, but now have recovered to an average of over 400 monthly. Figures for July show 409 deliveries.
Perhaps impacting the number is the fact that Tulare Adventist Hospital has now closed their OB/GYN service, Just announced Family HealthCare Network will no longer route their patients to Hanford’s Adventist Health hospital for deliveries.
Kaweah Health administrator Marc Mertz says that Tulare Adventist volumes were quite low,some six deliveries a month, so” that impact given our monthly volume of over 400 will be relatively small”. Regarding the news from FHCN that change “was effective as of September 1 so it is too soon to tell how that will impact us.”
During the Colvid years through the end of 2021 the early months of the U.S. pandemic were associated with a drop in births, leading to an overall” baby bust” on the order of 100,000 fewer births that would have occurred based on pre-pandemic trends.
At Kaweah Health, the Covid quarantine has led to a decline of about 20% in the number of births at Kaweah Delta in 2020 compared to 2019. As of December 2020, the hospital reported 342 deliveries compared to 415 in December 2019 — the same trend seen every month in the past year.
Now the normal pattern has returned.
“We will continue to monitor delivery volumes closely, and we will take the necessary steps to ensure that Kaweah Health is very well prepared to provide all expectant mothers in Tulare and Kings Counties with excellent maternal care. We have a sufficient number of patient rooms to handle a higher volume of deliveries, and we will increase staffing levels and physician coverage as necessary.”
Kaweah Health’s Family Birthing Center provides maternity and infant health care. It offers the community a 21-bed labor and delivery unit, a 42-bed postpartum unit, the largest labor/delivery triage area in Tulare County with anesthesiologists, Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialists for high-risk deliveries and a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) staffed by physicians from Valley Children’s Medical Group. Kaweah Health’s NICU is community designated by California Children’s Services as providing care for infants as early as 26-weeks gestation and has a neonatologist and pediatric hospitalist on site 24/7.
Kaweah Health adding more RNs
Working with area educational institutions Kaweah Health has a robust pipeline of new RNs that should be working with the hospital in coming years.The pipeline of new nurses expects some 73 new nurses will be added in 2026, 25 in 2027 and 50 in the year 2028.Local RN graduates should than double by 2026.
chart from Kaweah Health baby pic: Braelynn Tate Nicholson, Kaweah Health’s first baby girl of 2023.
Tulare County is unlikely to repeat as the top agricultural production county in the US for the 2023 year. In 2022 Tulare County edged out rivals Fresno and Kern counties for the top spot and bragging rights.
Milk Prices per cwt
So far this year, figures have been released for Fresno County but not for Tulare or Kern.
Tulare County generated $8.6 billion in 2022 compared to Fresno County at just over $8 billion. The primary reason Tulare County beat out both Fresno and Kern counties in 2022 was the record high price of milk that year. Kern reported a total crop value of $7.7 billion in 2022.
In 2022 dairy operators received a record $26.63 per hundredweight for their milk. But in 2023 the price dropped to just over $20.
Production of milk in Tulare County has been flat for several years at over 101 million hundredweight, still the nation’s top milk producer.
For 2023, Tulare’s all crop total is likely to hover around $8 million billion – almost $700,000 less than the year before given that we know the lower milk valuation.
Just about one-third of Tulare’s total agricultural value is generated from its dairies
Fresno takes victory lap
Fresno County recently reported all crops came in at $8.58 billion in 2023.In their report Fresno County has already declared that “ This is our highest value yet and keeps Fresno County as a top agricultural producing county in California and the nation!”
Looking at the Fresno County crop report for 2023, this county has about a quarter of the milk volume of Tulare County so it is far less dependent on this crop. In 2023, Fresno doubled its value in processing tomatoes, tripled valuation in cherries, and increased the value of pistachios by about 20%.On the downside,its valuation in citrus fell.
Milk prices nationwide gyrated from $10 a hundredweight to $25 in the past 25 years with a high in 2022 affected by the impacts of Covid 19.Farmers will tell you that in 2022 their feed costs were also the highest level ever.
second graphic: Value of milk in the US by year from Trading Economics. 2 Attachments • Scanned by Gmail
Infrastructure, investments, logistics and economics trump concerns over ‘woke’ policies and taxes
Company efforts to relocate corporate offices from California may be on the increase, but their operations continue here in most cases because they each have a huge market in the Golden State they don’t want to lose.
We all heard the names. Elon Musk’s companies Tesla, SpaceX and X will relocate their corporate offices. Musk has increasingly complained about the state’s “woke”policies.
Chevron too says they are moving their corporate office to Texas where taxes are non existent.Texas has no corporate or individual income tax. Locally Tulare-born Ruiz Foods said they would open their corporate office there.
But what these companies also have in common is that their everyday business depends on a significant presence in California, where the majority of their income comes from.
Take Tesla.The Company sells six times more electric vehicles in California then they do in Texas and that requires repair, dealer service and sales operations to remain in the Golden State where they have a huge stake.
Musk’s political statements recently have reduced demand for new Teslas in the Golden State that have plummeted 24% to 52,211 vehicles in Q2.
How about SpaceX that currently has a manufacturing facility and corporate office in Hawthorne California in the Los Angeles basin.The company is expanding at Vandenberg Air Force Base, where it launches vehicles into space.
Musk may move a few employees but is unlikely to move the company to Texas, says Chris Thornberg of Beacon Economics in a July interview.
“You don’t pick up an enormous, complex operation like SpaceX and move it from one state to another, not without losing half your workforce, which SpaceX can hardly afford to do,” Thornberg said.
SpaceX has a pretty unique workforce of rocket scientists, “who don’t exactly grow on trees,” he added.
“They are not everywhere, and you need to hire them where they live and they start to live where they are hired,” Thornberg added.
Headquarters move all the time, he said, adding that it would only impact 200 or 300 employees, a small percentage of the 13,000 employees SpaceX has overall.
“Would he go as far as to move his production facilities to Texas?” Thornberg asked. “Not a chance.”
SpaceX’s 1-million-square-foot campus in Hawthorne, though, is home to more than just offices — it’s also the company’s primary production and processing facility for its Falcon 9 workhorse and Falcon Heavy rockets.
“ people who live here, live here for a reason — and you’re not going to convince a lot of these people to get up and move to Texas, simple as that.”
That’s part of the issue with these corporate moves. The workforce, which has a long history in California, does not have much interest in moving to sweaty Houston Texas, not known for its quality of life.How do you cool off when the average Gulf water temp is 86 degrees?
“ people who live here, live here for a reason — and you’re not going to convince a lot of these people to get up and move to Texas, simple as that.”
There’s another reason why SpaceX is expanding in California right now, including its partnership with the Department of Defense utilizing Vandenberg Space Force Base.
Writing In the Santa Maria Times in July, former military official Andrew Hackleman, a member of the Governor’s Military Council and the Governor’s Space Industry Task Force wrote “Today, Vandenberg Space Force Base is an integral part of our national security infrastructure. SpaceX is now launching nearly every week from VSFB with reusable rockets.
These missions include launches for the U.S. Space Force and other U.S. Department of Defense customers, U.S. civil agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for climate and environmental monitoring, and for commercial customers, including allied governments.
Similar to the successful partnership with commercial operators for launches, the U.S. government also relies on commercial companies like SpaceX for global low Earth orbit satellite systems.
These systems, including U.S. government owned and operated satellites, require frequent launches, which are only possible with multiple launch sites across the United States.
The pace of launch that Vandenberg provides isn’t the only vital aspect of VSFB as a launch site. Vandenberg is also the only feasible site in the U.S. for launches into polar orbit.”
Indeed this summary of the logistics of Vandenberg says it all from the US Flight Centennial Commission.
“Vandenberg Air Force Base, which is often referred to by its workers as America’s quiet launch site, is located at 34.7 degrees north latitude, at a spot on the rugged Central California coast where the shoreline runs east and west. Because of this unique geography, rockets launched from Vandenberg can fly nearly due south and not cross over land until they reach Antarctica. This is ideal for launches to polar orbit, because spent rocket stages or failed launches pose no threat to inhabited land. Vandenberg has therefore been the launch site for numerous reconnaissance and Earth observation satellites that require polar orbits.”
Polar orbits are used for earth mapping, reconnaissance satellites, and in some weather satellites.
Instead of pulling out of California, SpaceX hopes to expand its operation at Vandenberg with one report saying”The partnership was previously approved for six launches per year. SpaceX has already completed 26 launches of Falcon 9 rockets from Vandenberg in 2024. They are expected to submit a request in October to boost that schedule to 50 annual launches, and later 100 annual launches.”
This situation illustrates the greater truth that Californa’s location adjacent to the Pacific Ocean is a critical reason why companies find doing business in the Golden State profitable and indeed, necessary. California is where trade with the Far East happens. Its ports are the busiest in the nation. Goods flow in and out of here and it is hubs for rail and air, as well as military bases that can only be located here.
In a word, this is where the action is.
This month the port of Los Angeles is booming in part because of troubles in other parts of the world, including the closing of shipping in the Red Sea and water shortage in the Panama Canal that is steering more traffic to the West Coast this summer, port officials. But it’s not just location. It’s a strategy of investment in key economic infrastructure that is making a difference whether that’s in our ports or in our colleges.
A few more location principles include the fact that California has one of the few spots in the world with the Mediterranean climate enabling it to be the top agricultural production state in the US with most diversity of crops.It is fortified by investment in water moving infrastructure that has happened over the last 70 years.California has double the irrigated acres of Texas where farms depend on rainfall for mostly field crops. If you want to grow oranges or Pima cotton or milk cows, it makes sense to do it in California. Again, economic factors trump the politics.
California has beneficial storms coming into the state from the moist Pacific hitting our high mountains, where the moisture stored as snow – later feeds the extensive state reservoir system. Only because of this investment, rain that falls by 2/3 in the northern half of the state irrigates the southern part of the state where 2/3 of the people live.
Texas has few mountains and that’s why Texans vacation Colorado. In the Golden State, you can go skiing in the morning and surfing in the evening.Can’t do that in the “Panhandle.”
One commenter noted that only “one has a stunningly beautiful 800+ mile coastline, 9 national parks, and subjectively the best Mexican and Asian cuisine this country has to offer.”
Texas, unlike California, has not seen multiple waves of immigrants over the decades that have been welcomed here. Then there is a tradition of tolerance here – unlike Texas that restricts reproductive health for women and once enslaved black people.
California is also home to many of the best universities in the US that help foster innovation and talent beyond any other location in the US. The cluster of innovation for the US is in the Silicon Valley in the Bay Area.Some 41 of the top 50 most valuable companies in California are headquartered in the Bay Area as of May 2024 and amazingly, 80 of the top 100 companies in the state have their corporate offices in the greater SF area showing the breadth of the area’s dominance.
West Coast Dominance
Led by Nvidia,Apple and Alphabet (Google) these companies are also number 2,3 and 4 in the United States with Microsoft, based in Minnesota, listed as number one.
Meta (Facebook) is in the top 10, based in Palo Alto.Other top 10 companies are also from the West Coast based in Seattle including Microsoft,Amazon and Costco. Besides computer companies – California sports top financial firms Visa and Wells Fargo – both based in San Francisco.Nationwide 4 of the top 10 companies in the US are based in the Bay Area.
Anyway back to other companies leaving the state.
Oil giant Chevron wants to move headquarters out of the Bay Area too.
One part of their business that they are unlikely to relocate is over 1800+ Chevron gas stations in California where the company has about a 15% market share of retail gas sales. In terms of retail sales, California is a much more important market than Texas where there are just over 1100 stations.The company will continue operating two of the state’s nine remaining refineries and continue pulling oil from the ground
Chevron gas stations in California are infamous in that they uniformly are the most expensive option for motors in almost every market in the state. Chevron has secured crossroad locations in towns, large and small up and down the state where they are sometimes the only choice.
But motorists fed up with high gas prices are increasingly shopping around for cheaper gas like in Lemoore, California,sometimes a dollar cheaper per gallon.
Despite chatter about the Bay Area losing Chevron the company itself said recently “There would be minimal immediate relocation impacts to other employees currently based in San Ramon, with positions in support of the company’s California operations remaining in San Ramon.”
Chevron currently has roughly 7,000 employees in the Houston area and approximately 2,000 employees in San Ramon.” Somebody has to collect all that money from California motorists.
As for Ruiz Foods – production will remain in Tulare County serving California where people eat more burritos than in Texas.It is where your salad comes from too.
Shipping cargo in California is getting cheaper this summer as diesel prices in the Golden State continue to drop. AAA says diesel prices a year ago were an average of $5.73 as of August 24,2023.This August 24 the cost is down to $4.92- down 81 cents dropping 12 cents from late July 2024.
Nationwide the average diesel price decreased by 1.6 cents, settling at $3.688 per gallon as of Aug. 19, according to the Energy Information Administration. This marks the sixth consecutive week of declines, with prices cumulatively dropping by 17.7 cents over this period. The current diesel price is 70.1 cents lower than it was at this time in 2023.
Transportation is a huge factor in food prices that appear to be dropping this summer as well. Food price inflation in the US remained unchanged at 2.2% in July 2024 compared to the previous month, as prices were unchanged for both food at home (1.1%) and food away from home (4.1%). On a monthly basis, food prices rose by 0.2% in July, after rising by 0.2% in the prior month. Food inflation was double that a year ago.
Reduced demand for petroleum
Petroleum prices in general are down on reduced demand and high production. This year the U.S. is pumping record amounts of petroleum
.“We’ve never produced more oil than we’re producing now,” Andrew Gross, a spokesperson for AAA says. That record production comes as U.S. demand has tapered — from 9.8 million barrels of gasoline per day in recent years to barely 9 million per day now
Oil analyst Tom Kloza points to several factors to explain the change in an NPR news article.: Remote work means fewer commuters. There are an estimated 3.3 million electric vehicles on U.S. roads, more than twice as many as in 2021. More EVs have helped keep demand for gasoline in check, although Kloza notes that the effect is relatively modest, with every million EVs sold reducing demand by about 22,000 barrels a day. And Kloza also notes the gradually aging U.S. population — older Americans, he says, “tend to drive a lot less.”
Zillow reports that the current average 30-year fixed mortgage rate fell 3 basis points from 6.02% to 5.99% on Friday August 23.
The 30-year fixed mortgage rate is down 16 basis points from the previous week’s average rate of 6.15%.
The rate is down as the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield fell Friday when Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled at the annual Jackson Hole symposium that the central bank will soon begin cutting interest rates.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped by about 6 basis points to 3.801%.
Additionally, the current national average 15-year fixed mortgage rate decreased 3 basis points from 5.34% to 5.31%. The current national average 5-year ARM mortgage rate is up 17 basis points from 6.16% to 6.33%.
The dollar is at a 7-month low today- a move that will help our exports.Interest rates and oil prices are both down as well.Corn is leading food prices down too.Want to buy a house? Mortgage rates are below 6 percent nationally says Zillow. Hey! Isn’t that what we wanted?
The nation’s largest theater chain just posted second-quarter results for this year. Are people heading back to the movie theaters? Not yet, it seems.
During a quarter in which box office grosses started off weaker, the nation’s biggest exhibitor AMC Theatres posted a net loss as well as revenue almost $300 million below the comparable frame a year ago.
Attendance drops 25%
The movie theater chain, led by CEO Adam Aron, posted total revenue of $1.03 billion and a loss of $32.8 million in the second quarter of 2024. Attendance fell from 66 million-plus patrons at its theaters a year ago to about 50 million in its latest quarter, about a 25 percent decline. The U.S. market saw a slightly higher decline in quarterly attendance compared to attendance at its theater locations in international markets.
Treehouse California Almonds Plans Expansion
Treehouse California Almonds sells a full range of roasted and manufactured almonds, including blanched whole, sliced, and diced almonds, almond meal, almond butter, and natural whole almonds. The almonds are hulled and shelled in the Treehouse Almonds plant near Delano in Kern County. This shelled raw product is then trucked to the Earlimart site for processing in Tulare County. The company has applied to Tulare County for a permit.
Expansion will happen at 6914 Road 160, Earlimart, CA . The proposed project consists of an expansion of the existing processing plant into four (4) phases, including construction of additional processing, warehouse, and canopy space, solar canopies, and a new WWTF to treat wastewater for irrigation.
Phase 1: Construction of a 644 sq. ft. metal building addition, a 4,966 sq. ft. canopy, and (2) 5,013 sq. ft. fumigation room buildings with (2) 902 sq. ft. canopies for a total of 5,915 sq. ft. ea. as additions to an existing warehouse. It will include the relocation of an existing 750 sq. ft. scale house. It will also include the construction of a water treatment facility.
Phase 2: Construction of a 5,176 sq. ft. canopy, a 6,263 sq. ft. fumigation room building with a 1,127 sq. ft. canopy for a total of 7,390 sq. ft., and a 1,275 sq. ft. fumigation room with a 230 sq. ft. canopy for a total of 1,505 sq. ft. as additions to an existing warehouse.
Phase 3: Construction of a 162,000 sq. ft. warehouse.
Phase 4: Construction of a 4,433 sq. ft. solar panel canopy, a 6,975 sq. ft. solar panel canopy, and a 7,182 sq. ft. solar panel canopy.
The Project would allow the applicant to diversify the packaging of materials on-site and use additional property for wastewater treatment and irrigation of crops. The Project will not increase operational hours. The Project will not increase the volume of raw almond product coming into the facility from Delano, nor will it increase the amount of processed or finished product shipped out of the facility.
The facility currently operates two (2) 10-hour shifts, four (4) to five (5) days a week, depending on the season, with 87 employees working the day shift and 49 employees working the night shift. The proposed Project is anticipated to add an additional eight employees.
County administrator Mike Washam says plans for TA Truck Stop have been filed to locate at the Ave 120 and Rd 124 on the eastside of Highway 99 near Tipton.
“They are doing civil works now” to locate the multi pump station with a convenience store, showers and a restaurant. The site was formerly an old cotton gin.
TA has Hwy 99 locations near Bakersfield and in Madera.
Owned by TravelCenters of America LLC, it is the largest publicly traded full-service truck stop and travel center company in the United States. The company operates full service centers, convenience stores, and restaurants under the TravelCenters of America, TA, Petro Stopping Centers, TA Express, GOASIS brands.
TravelCenters of America is headquartered in Westlake, Ohio, operates in 44 U.S. states, and employs nearly 20,000 people, as of 2021.
In May 2023,British owned oil company BP Products North America Inc., a wholly-owned indirect subsidiary of BP plc acquired the company.
Stations are typically large at 10,000 sft. In terms of the number of pumps, if it will be similar to their Buttonwillow store, there are 20 pumps for gasoline and 20 pumps for diesel.
The new Highway 99 truck stop will compete directly with two major players including Loves and Flying J, both in Tulare as well as the new Mavericks station at Cartmill under construction and Valero gas station on Caldwell and several in Goshen. There’s a new truckstop south of this site as well near Earlimart called Akal Travel Center.
Ave 120 is at the north end of Tipton, just a few miles from Tulare.It is also the location of the Cal Dairies plant.
