It’s winter and the housing market is sizzling
Weeeee doggies! To say the local real estate market is hot would be an understatement. There are currently only about 37 properties listed for sale within Lodi city limits, according to Lodi Realtor Roxanne Rocha. Thirtyseven! That’s piddly low.
Normally, the number is over 100, especially in the winter when sales are slower. But not this year. With inventory of available homes so low, prices have rocketed upward over the past year. Zillow.com estimates housing prices in the Lodi area will soar 10% higher this year.
predicts values will rise 7% and the California Association of Realtors forecasts an 8.5% rise. Take your pick. Whatever number turns out to be true, this joint is jumpin! “Inventory continues to be the driving force, I believe, for the increasing prices,” says Rocha. She says some of her listings receive up to 20 offers, and buyers in some cases are offering up to $50,000 over asking price.
The average price per foot for homes sold within the past month is $253 (not all places will fetch that). The average home has sold within 24 days of hitting the market, she says. Wow. Just wow.
HEAVE-HO: Animal Friends Connection is having to move from their Cherokee Lane location, they say, because the property has been sold. Organization President Pat Sherman writes on social media that the new owners have given them an unspecified amount of time to clear out, maybe six months. But Sherman isn’t even sure they have that long, she says. A fundraising effort begun last year has generated less than $4,000 of the $250,000 they say they need to purchase a new location. In the meantime, Sherman says they will be evicted eventually and is desperately seeking a solution.
CHEERS: The Lodi Grape Festival may actually happen this year. Fair Manager Mark Armstrong says he’s hopeful Grape Festival will be held, even if it’s a scaled-down version. The effects of the pandemic and lockdowns severely impacted the organization, but Armstrong says they were lucky enough to receive some sales tax funding and a federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan from the feds, which helped keep them on solid financial footing.
“We worked hard to conserve the money we had,” he says. The festival could begin to host some events starting in June or July, says Armstrong. The fair food drive-throughs held last fall were successful, and he believes there is a huge pent-up demand for entertainment such as the festival offers. He says they are pessimistic about things until June or July, but after that he sees things starting to return to near normal. Fingers are crossed.
COMING SOON: Burlington department store (formerly Burlington Coat Factory) will be the new tenant moving into the old JC Penney building on Kettleman Lane in the Sunwest Plaza shopping center, next to Food For Less. Leasing agent Will Bettencourt of Browman Development, owner of the center, says Burlington should be open by June. The company has about 740 stores in 40 states and Puerto Rico, with its corporate headquarters located in Burlington Township, New Jersey.
Penney’s closed their doors in Lodi in 2017 after decades in Lodi. They first opened in downtown Lodi in the 1920s, then moved to the (then) outskirts of town in the ‘90s. The closure displaced about 33 employees. … As you’ve probably heard, a new chicken joint will be going in along Kettleman Lane in the same shopping center. Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers will be the first fast food provider to have two completely independent and “computer-monitored” drive thru lanes, according to the city’s Community Development Director John Della Monica.
“We will be seeing more of these in the future,” he says. A pad will have to be built for the new restaurant, which will be located between Taco Bell and Farmer Boys. The project has already been approved by the planning commission and is now in the permitting stage with the city.
FRENCH CONNECTION: Two weeks ago we wrote that the old Alexander’s Bakery building is coming down and a new building that will house a bakery (with a bar, no less) and a retail storefront is going up. The new bakery will be operated by Linden resident Sydnee Kennedy. She was a student at the San Francisco Baking Institute and more recently she’s been doing short-term internships around the country to learn various styles of baking. Her forte is French baking and she plans on offering classic French breads and pastries. “Sunset on the Avenue” is the tentative name of her new place, she says, but that could change. … Ruby’s Bakery and Café opened last Friday on Church Street between Pine and Oak. Lynn Echeverria and her husband Fausto opened the place after working for 15 years at a “French-inspired” bakery in San Francisco. The young couple was laid off from their jobs in 2019, and COVID looked like it would put the kibosh on their plans to open a place in Lodi. It actually just delayed them. The pair found it hard to arrange suitable financing for their dream since they were new to town and were currently not homeowners. So, they turned to “the crowd” to raise money. They raised almost $6,000 on GoFundMe, even though they were hoping for $20k. No matter. They’re open and are asking you to support them. Ruby’s, which is named after the couple’s daughter, will feature French-style breads and pastries.
CONNECTIONS: The city council has decided to spend about $1 million to upgrade its fiberoptic network that loops through the city. The system is about 20 years old and is used to inter-connect its various facilities, including City Hall, the Municipal Services Center, each fire station and others. It is also used for collecting water and electric meter data, which is used for billing. See those suitcase-sized boxes with an antenna sticking out strapped to some light poles throughout town? Those are “collectors” that wirelessly listen for your water and electric meters to bleat out usage data. When the collectors hear it, the data is transferred over city fiber to headquarters. Next thing you know you have a utility bill in the mail. The fiber also connects to Hutchins Street Square, which can now be used as a venue for live city council meeting or other events broadcast over the local cable TV channel. The city’s consultant says the fiber network can be expanded to support future innovation, such as becoming a broadband competitor in the marketplace. The idea of a cityowned fiber network was Alan Vallow’s, who was the city’s Electric Utility Director in the 1990s.