Elk Grove likely to lure Kubota from Lodi

Tractor company looking to expand west region headquarters

A Sacramento County city may soon be home to hundreds of new jobs and more manufacturing.

Kubota Tractor Corp. and the city of Elk Grove are in talks that could bring the equipment giant’s west region headquarters — a planned multimillion-dollar, 701,000 square-foot campus — to the south end of the city. Elk Grove’s gain would be Lodi’s loss, as the city is currently home to Kubota’s western headquarters, a 17-acre, 180,000square-foot facility located at 1175 S. Guild Ave., 22 miles south of Elk Grove.

Kubota has not discussed a possible expansion in Lodi, according to Astrida Trupovnieks, the city’s business development manager, who noted that Elk Grove has a distinct advantage due to the proposed new plant being located on city-owned property.

“If a city has that asset there are all kinds of incentives possible,” Trupovnieks said. “I don’t know if that’s the case, but I would be surprised if it weren’t.

“We don’t have parcels that size, particularly city-owned, other than White Slough Water Pollution Control Facility. It’s great for Elk Grove.”

Trupovnieks said that a lack of industrial space also keeps large distribution centers like Amazon from locating in Lodi, but added that officials are currently looking at development alternatives to make the city more economically competitive. However, she said, that wouldn’t work with Kubota’s time frame.

Lodi’s Kubota plant employs about 70 workers, according to Pat Patrick, CEO and president of the Lodi Chamber of Commerce.

“Losing sales tax, jobs — that’s not what we want to see,” Patrick said. “(Kubota) wants a space that is much bigger than what we have to offer east of (Highway 99).”

Talks between Elk Grove and Kubota continue and several key components — land and annexation issues high among them — are still months away. But economic development officials are hopeful for a tent-pole project that could draw as many as 300 jobs and more manufacturers.

“It’s not a done deal, but we’re optimistic,” said Darrell Doan, city economic development director. Elk Grove and Kubota have been in discussions for three years on a new site, Doan said.

Landing Kubota, Doan added, would “plant a flag that Elk Grove is ready to do business” with national and multinational corporations, something Doan says the city has shown with the opening two years ago of a 150,000-square-foot Amazon fulfillment center on industrial

Union Park Way.

“We’ve had a thriving but small manufacturing sector in Elk Grove for decades. What changed was two years ago when Amazon came calling,” Doan said. “We said, if we have well-conditioned industrial land, you can build an industrial center in Elk Grove.”

The proposed Kubota site, planned for Grant Line Road at the southern end of Waterman Road east of Highway 99, would be home to one of Kubota’s three national warehouse and distribution facilities, joining sites in Illinois and Georgia, and is expandable to 1 million square feet, Doan said. Kubota’s U.S. headquarters is in Grapevine, Texas, near Dallas.

The proposed campus would also be a final equipment assembly facility, house executive offices and become home to the conglomerate’s Kubota University, its U.S. employee training and education center.

Kubota in a statement said it “is underway with plans to expand its footprint in the Western United States. Kubota is currently assessing 50-acre properties in open discussions with the Economic Development team in Elk Grove,” adding that “the area will offer the company an opportunity to expand distribution capacity to an established dealer network.”

Kubota’s Western Division serves customers and dealers in 11 states.

The Grant Line land is familiar to Elk Grove residents. City officials in the middle of the last decade proposed it as a stadium site in Elk Grove’s longshot and ultimately aborted bid to bring professional soccer to the city. That morphed into a plan for a regional youth soccer complex with multiple fields spread across its acreage, before that, too, went by the boards.

Today, a series of steps must fall into place to bring Kubota aboard.

Elk Grove is in the process of annexing the 500-acre Grant Line parcel into the city ahead of a sale of the land to the global manufacturer. The annexation still must meet Sacramento County Local Area Formation Committee approval. City Council members must approve the land deal and Kubota still needs land use and permit approvals. The company will likely go before city planners for the OKs in July, about the same time council members will look at the parcel sale, Doan said.

“We want to market to industrial and manufacturing users. There’s a lot of interest in Elk Grove in these industries,” Doan said. “My team is spreading the message that we’re open for larger, more industrial projects like this.”