WATSONVILLE—The Watsonville City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved the construction of a two-story industrial warehouse on the Manabe-Ow property that will allow an existing beer and restaurant supply company to move to a new location.
Reyes Holdings, a national wholesaler, distributor and bottler acquired Elixyr Distributing in 2020, which is currently located at 270 W. Riverside Drive.
The company is the seventh largest privately held company in the United States, with annual sales in excess of $40 billion, according to its website.
But that location is too small for the company, says Construction Manager Pehr Peterson, who describes the company as the biggest beer distributor in California.
“If you drink Corona, if you drink Modelo, if you drink Miller products, you’re drinking something that came out of one of our warehouses,” he says.
The new 155,847-square-foot location at 200 Manabe Ow Road off of Ohlone Parkway will allow the business to more than double its current space, and offer more loading bays for delivery trucks, Peterson says.
Reyes also owns the Martin Brower company, which distributes McDonald’s supplies and Reyes Coca Cola Bottling, a product line that includes Monster energy drinks.
The Council also approved a mitigated negative declaration for the project, meaning that if the developers follow certain criteria, it will not have an appreciable effect on the surrounding environment.
This includes 1,286 square feet of native riparian vegetation plantings off-site in a five-foot-wide buffer strip along the City access road adjacent to the slough.
The Watsonville Planning Commission approved it on March 22.
Watsonville Principal Planner Matt Orbach said the possible traffic impacts will be lessened by two roundabouts on Ohlone Parkway, one at Lighthouse Drive and the other at Loma Vista Drive.
Grading work is expected to begin within the next few weeks, with construction to follow in the late summer, and expected to take 14 months, City officials say.
Approved by the city council in 2010, the Manabe-Ow Business Park is a 95-acre site of former agricultural land located just east of Highway 1 near Ohlone Parkway.
At the time of its approval, City leaders sung its praises as offering about one million square feet of tenant space for light industrial business, and another 30,000 square feet of retail space and 7.2 acres of work-force housing.
They also envisioned it bringing as many as 2,100 jobs.
Reyes Holdings will bring its current 137 employees to the new site, and while Peterson did not rule out a possible expansion, he said there are no such plans in the works.
That was a bone of contention for Councilwoman Ari Parker, who said the property has fallen far short of its promised job goal.
“That’s a concern, because this was like a crown jewel,” she said. “What Manabe-Ow was going to be and how it was going to bring revenue into Watsonville.”
Orbach said such a prediction was not in the cards, particularly given that the infrastructure costs and challenges with the floodplain keeps many potential buyers away.
“It didn’t pencil out for most people to come and develop this,” he said. “So the idea of a business park with lots of small buildings and internal streets and all the rest of that in the current economic climate where that’s not in demand is just not realistic.”
Johnson said that the new property is the company’s only option, and that the company knew the current space was too small when it moved in.
“There is nothing in a 30-mile radius to acquire, there is nothing in a 50-mile radius to acquire,” he said. “We can’t continue to run out of a 60,000-square-foot facility.”
Plans include solar panels on the roof that will offset all of its energy use, as well as a fleet of electric vehicles and equipment.
Reyes also plans on implementing routing systems in which its trucks will not go through neighborhoods.
The warehouse would operate as a distribution facility that operates 24 hours per day, Monday through Friday. Proposed operations would include multiple shifts of warehouse, delivery, and office employees.
Also included are 93 parking spaces, 20 truck docks, 33 truck trailer parking stalls, 109 bike stalls, and 10 spaces for electric vehicles.
