Aren’t you tired of the commute?
Kyoho Manufacturing California celebrated its grand opening Monday, and speakers praised the $73 million project with a common theme: the breakneck speed with which the city of Stockton, San Joaquin County, San Joaquin Partnership, contractors and company managers were able to build this car-parts manufacturing plant in southern Stockton.
 New employees of Kyoho Manufacturing California attend the factory’s grand opening Monday in Stockton. The plant is expected to bring 1,000 new jobs to San Joaquin County. Tracy Press photo.
Kyoho will supply 11,000 pressed and welded parts a day for next-day production of Toyota Corollas and Pontiac Vibes at Ogura’s plant in Fremont. NUMMI is operated by Toyota and is jointly owned by Toyota and General Motors.
It’s a huge benefit for NUMMI to have a parts plant as close as Stockton. And it’s a benefit to the entire county to be able to offer 200 new jobs right now, a total that will grow to 1,000 in future phases.
Kyoho brings to 10 the number of “just-in-time” parts suppliers in San Joaquin County for Toyota’s NUMMI plant. All of these Toyota suppliers have brought new jobs with good benefits for people who can now work and live here. Not only that, they offer training for skilled jobs and education opportunities that almost guarantee job placement with their companies. Plus, if Kyoho is any indication, these companies bring with them a deeply ingrained sense of responsibility to the community, to safety and to personal development. Every employee is part of a team involved in making continuous improvement to their operations.
Some of the Toyota suppliers in the county also provide parts for Toyota in Vancouver, B.C., and Tijuana, Mexico. Our county’s strategic location with a major inland sea port, the crossroads of two major rail lines and interstate freeway systems make it not only an ideal location for manufacturing support of Bay Area companies but a manufacturing supplier to the entire western North American continent.
In Tracy, which is closer to the Bay Area than Stockton, we talk a lot about jobs creation, and when we do, we need to ask what it would take to attract a high-quality manufacturing company such as this — or even high-tech, software or solar technology outfits.
If we are willing to look at the Kyoho example, we can find many of the answers.
When this U.S. subsidiary of a Japanese company went to the San Joaquin Partnership, a nonprofit, economic-development corporation that helps business and industry locate here, it had some special requirements. First of all, the site had to be already established and available for industrial development. It needed to be close to the Interstate 5 corridor, and it couldn’t be in a flood plain, because it needed a 20-foot basement. And — here’s the kicker — it had a strict timeline for completion.
The company, like so many others, needed an aggressive local government open to providing solutions to streamline its project through the stages of entitlements, environmental reviews, site improvements, plan approvals and permits. It needed an attitude of cooperation, not a bureaucratic paper mill that would sit on a set of plans.
It helped that Kyoho was able to operate within the Stockton/San Joaquin Enterprise Zone, which offers financing incentives, tax benefits and reduced building permit and plan check fees. And Stockton was willing to kick in some incentives as well.
But more than that, everyone — the city of Stockton, San Joaquin County, the Partnership, Kyoho, and all the building and engineering firms involved — agreed in advance that they would work together in a positive way to make this happen, just in time.
A project that was estimated to take at least 18 months to complete took only eight months.
As mentioned, Kyoho now brings to 10 the number of NUMMI just-in-time suppliers in the county. That number could double before long, for a variety of reasons. Toyota is committed to NUMMI and to developing its manufacturing base in our area.
Tracy’s existing industrial areas are filling fast, and much of what remains in terms of available sites of the final phase of what is known as the Northeast Industrial Area is going fast.
Tracy needs to create a job corridor in western Tracy that stretches from its Patterson Pass Business Park to the Gateway Business Park. And it needs to become part of the enterprise zone, as well as part of the Free Trade Zone, so it can effectively operate in and export to the international marketplace.
Would most people in our community like to work here and have good paying jobs here, rather than have to commute to work every day? Most probably would.
A good start would be to accelerate a specific plan for job development on the west side of Tracy, from Patterson Pass Industrial Park to our newly formed Gateway business area. We need to be expeditious but not cut corners and diminish quality; the job must be done right. The west side should be ready with a broad mix of sites available for companies to locate or expand here and create jobs for our community. We need to encourage economic growth without all the red tape by creating an environment that fosters growth and expansion of business and industry.
If those driving our city say the standard time frame for completing this specific plan is, say, one year, we need to get somebody else to drive. It doesn’t need to take that long.
We are asking our city’s leaders to get going on this now, so that our friends and neighbors — and everyone who lives in and loves Tracy — can have a better future.
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