If a local developer’s current plans move forward, corporate
jets will become commonplace at the Hollister Municipal Airport
someday. Residents and tourists will spend a Saturday afternoon at
a museum. A couple at a hotel-restaurant will overlook the expanse
of open land and swooping aircraft. The area will bustle with
activity.
If a local developer’s current plans move forward, corporate jets will become commonplace at the Hollister Municipal Airport someday. Residents and tourists will spend a Saturday afternoon at a museum. A couple at a hotel-restaurant will overlook the expanse of open land and swooping aircraft. The area will bustle with activity.
Such a transformed image for the airport and local job growth would be conceivable if developer Hugh Bikle follows through on plans for a nearly 2-million square-foot business park. It would join several other similar industrial parks already at the north end of the city.
Bikle said the development – designed to be a mix of office space and airport-related businesses – would secure long-term job growth in the airport vicinity.
“Believe it or not, it will take about 100 years to fill up,” he said.
Al Martinez, director of the Economic Development Corporation, said the industrial expansion will result in other areas of local growth, including population.
Martinez called Bikle’s project “very significant” toward the future of the county’s economic growth.
“There will be an overall trickle-down effect,” Martinez said.
Bikle is wrapping up the annexation and planning process he called “long and torturous.” The project – unnamed – began in the late 1980s when he acquired one of two parcels of land at the location. He purchased the remainder of the allotment about 10 years ago. The lot is located north of the airport offices adjacent to runway 24.
Bikle said he hopes the park will include a museum and a lodging facility, along with a conference center and other amenities for industry.
“I always planned to do it,” Bikle said. And now he will, once the city’s sewer moratorium expires.
“Our timeline will be that we build when the sewer is available,” he said.
The state issued a cease-and-desist order delaying construction in Hollister that adds to the sewer system, a penalty stemming from a 15-million gallon wastewater spill in May 2002.
Since 1980, several business parks in the airport vicinity have been developed and are home to a number of Hollister’s highest profile businesses – including Lifesparc, Marich Confectionery, Corbin Pacific and Milgard Windows.
Ken Lindsay, owner of Sierra Pacific Associates, Inc. developed four industrial parks – the Hollister Business Park, Northpoint Business Center, Citation Park and Airpark Business Center.
Martinez said the parks will especially serve business owners with airplanes, an advantage Hollister has over other cities.
In San Benito County, Bikle has ventured mostly into housing developments. Though he developed the Shoreline Industrial Park in Mountain View, what he called “the premiere industrial park in Silicon Valley.”
“Obviously our community (Hollister) really, really needs it,” Bikle said. “For one, we have a much higher unemployment rate than other communities.”
Once the state lifts the city’s cease-and-desist order, Bikle will procure his track of land with infrastructure. And for Lindsay, who has already built his infrastructure, recruitment of businesses won’t be so difficult.
For now, Bikle can merely anticipate the lifting of the moratorium that may occur between August of this year and October 2005. The precise timeline depends on the Regional Water Quality Control Board, as city officials in August will request the water board to at least partially lift the ban.
Community Development Director Bill Card said the project will move forward and will eventually provide the city an economic boost.
“Once we get over these sewer issues, that will be a priority for the planning commission,” Card said.
Lindsay, like Bikle, must also wait. Attracting businesses to Lindsay’s parks has been a hopeless cause, he said. He has lost several “major” potential deals since the moratorium began, and his latest development, Airpark Business Center, remains virtually empty.
“All of us got caught,” Bikle said of the moratorium’s timing. “We all get together and cry once in awhile, but it doesn’t do any good.”
Even with the two men inevitably competing for business in the future, both said that environment will benefit the recruitment process and, ultimately, the economy of Hollister.
Lindsay said he has even spoke in front of the City Council in favor of Bikle’s project.
Bikle said he respects Lindsay’s work and accredited “at the very minimum” 50 percent of Hollister’s job growth in recent decades to Lindsay’s developments. He called their future relationship as competitors one of “mutual support.”
“People (businesses leaders seeking land) want to be able to look at two places,” Bikle said.
