In two years’ time, development is wrapping up inside the Ceres Gateway Center.
Ceres has new places to eat, wash the family car and gas up but the last two pieces of the shopping center puzzle will be a new Panda Express and the Woodspring Inn & Suites which opens this year. Not only will those staying at the new hotel pay the Transient and Occupancy Tax (TOT), they will be spending more money in the center and other nearby businesses.
The center and its sales tax receipts will provide some relief for the city of Ceres which resorted to the use of one-time federal monies to balance the 2024-25 fiscal year budget.
“It’ll help us tremendously,” said Ceres City Manager Doug Dunford of the extra sales tax, noting it will supplement the primary revenue source of property taxes. Just how much of a help remains to be seen since it generally takes a year of sales tax collection before the city sees its share in city coffers.
With the fully burdened cost of one officer being approximately $170,000 annually, that extra tax revenue is eagerly anticipated.
The Courier first reported about plans to develop the 14-acre triangle-shaped piece of commercial property wedged between Mitchell Road and Highway 99 in May 2008. At that time, Anthony Cannella was mayor and Ralph Ogden & Associates received city approval to build a commercial development consisting of a 162-room, three-story Hampton Inn & Suites south of Service Road and a tentative parcel map to split 16 acres into nine parcels at the southwest corner of Service and Mitchell roads. The approval laid the groundwork for the development of the area known as the Southern Gateway, later the Ceres Gateway Center.
The mortgage crisis of 2008 and its accompanying chilling effect on monetary supply and the economy put the project into cardiac arrest.
For years it seemed like the center was just another pipedream project approved by the city and sucked into a black hole. The Ceres Planning Commission granted multiple extensions to keep the project alive until it finally expired in 2012. Along came the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 but like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, the center was resuscitated with a new design and brought back that year by Daniel Ogden, surviving son of real estate investor Ralph Ogden III who died in 2017.
All pessimism dissipated when the project broke ground a month after the November 2021 grand opening of the Walmart Supercenter in the Mitchell Ranch Shopping Center to the north.
During the term of Mayor Chris Vierra, the project evolved and changed a number of times. Eventually no sit-down restaurants signed on and instead of Hampton Inn, Woodspring Inn & Suites developed.
Some businesses planning to open dropped off the roster. Circle K and McDonald’s did not materialize but In-N-Out, Chipotle, Ono Hawaiian BBQ, Popeye’s, Starbucks and Nick the Greek did.
Other retail additions were Tractor Supply, Quick Quack Car Wash and a Union 76 gas station and convenience store.
