July 25,2018-
Toys R Us Puts Visalia store, others on the sales block
Bankrupt Toys R Us has hired a company to sell 284 properties across the nation including their now empty 31,000sf building on South Mooney in Visalia.
Toys”R”Us Property Company I, LLC has retained the services of Raider Hill Advisors, a private real estate investment and retail advisory firm. Raider Hill will lead the Propco I Debtor’s efforts to maximize the value of the portfolios of Propco I and its subsidiaries, which include approximately 284 properties in 46 states totaling 14.5 million square feet.
Central California stores to be sold include Bakersfield, Visalia Clovis, Pinedale and Santa Maria.They are also selling a ground lease at a second Bakersfield location.
The properties are comprised of former Toys”R”Us and Babies”R”Us stores, distribution centers, the Company’s corporate headquarters in Wayne, NJ, and surplus retail properties ancillary to the former store locations.
CalCom Solar now CalCom Energy; Focus on Water-Energy-Food Nexus
Moving beyond solar CalCom Solar is now CalCom Energy indicative of the company’s long-term strategy. Visalia based CalCom Energy, will now focus on providing integrated energy solutions to the agriculture, water and utility markets.
“We’re at a crossroads where the water-energy-food nexus is intricately intertwined,” explained Dylan Dupre, President & CEO of CalCom Energy. “We are more than just a solar company. We are developing innovative distributed energy solutions to reduce the energy-dense activities of food production, drastically decrease water use, and ultimately shrink our carbon footprint.
The company leads the industry in the number of commercial solar interconnections in PG&E’s territory (www.calssa.org).
CalCom’s announcement coincides with positive news across the clean energy sector. In California, Senate Bill 700 makes its way through key committees of the California Legislature. The bi-partisan supported bill aims to expand energy storage incentives to $1.3 billion with a five-year extension of the Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) through 2026. In addition, Bloomberg New Energy Finance recently estimated that battery storage will reshape the energy system, enabling solar and wind to account for half of all global electricity generation by 2050 (2018 New Energy Outlook).
“We are on the cusp of a new era where clean energy will rapidly eclipse fossil fuels as the primary source of power generation,” Dupre remarked. “Over the next 10 years the costs of renewable generation will continue to fall, and with the arrival of affordable battery technology, the entire energy landscape is shifting. For the first time in history we will be able to cost-effectively generate, store and move energy intelligently across the grid — which will completely transform the energy landscape and move us closer to the future of a distributed architecture for the utility smart grid.”
Already, CalCom agriculture customers like D’Arrigo Bros. of California have adopted a distributed energy resources approach that includes large-scale PV, energy storage, and utility billing monitoring and analytics. D’Arrigo is adding two large (528 kW / 520 kW) batteries at their cooling facility to reduce demand charges and load-shift energy to different time of use (TOU) utility rate periods. They will also provide backup power to critical loads.
New Porterville SuperWalmart will use green building material
Porterville City Manager John Lollis says plans for the new SuperWalmart store at RiverWalk are moving forward
with construction to start in November 2018. “It will take about a year to be completed” expects Lollis with the retailer wanting to open for the holiday season next year.
Lollis says Walmart wants utilize an innovative green building material to build the big store, Cross Laminated Timber, what would be the first commercial application of the material in the state.
The material has some expected benefits in that it can help cut construction time with fewer on-site workers. A new factory in Tracy is being built that will specialize in the manufacturing of the structural material said to help streamline the building of affordable multi-story housing in California in the future.