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Thursday, May 17, 2012
Regional Focus: February 2006
Finding Equilibrium
Stockton and its neighbors cultivate sophisticated diversions while maintaining old-fashioned charm.
Story by Howard Lachtman
When lightning, thunder and cougars descended on Stockton at the end of 2005, their arrival was greeted with rejoicing rather than panic.
The three new sports teams — arena football’s Stockton Lightning, hockey’s Stockton Thunder and soccer’s California Cougars — and the December opening of the 10,000-seat, $65 million Stockton Arena the teams call home launched a new entertainment era in the county seat.
The arena, which also hosts shows and concerts, is a potent symbol of change in a city often described as the gateway to someplace else: Lodi vineyards, the Mother Lode or the thousand-mile waterways of the adjacent Delta. These days, however, Stockton is redrawing the map.
The waterfront arena follows the spring opening of a 5,000-seat ballpark for the Stockton Ports. The minor-league team got a field worthy of its major-league dreams, and fans quickly took to the classy ballpark’s wraparound concourse, river view and cozy “back porch” beyond center field.
A $50 million Sheraton Hotel will join the two sports venues in December 2006, as will a marina that will lure boaters into Stockton for sporting events and concerts, dining and shopping, films at the nearby 16-screen multiplex, and live performances at the Bob Hope Theatre (a restoration of the former Fox California movie palace).
“Having these amenities helps a city gain economic momentum and certainly influences people to relocate here,” says Dr. Sean Snaith, director of the University of the Pacific’s Business Forecasting Center. “Given the population increase we have and continue to have, I think it’s a case of a rising tide lifting all boats.”
One of those boats is the battleship Iowa. Stockton’s bid for the World War II warship includes a proposal to build a 1,100-foot dock and a 90,000-square-foot building at the Port of Stockton. Officials estimate that the city would garner $63 million in tour revenues from the ship in the first five years of its operation.
The battleship bid has seized the imagination of locals like businessman Tom Conner, whose summer film-classics series at the University of the Pacific is one of the city’s small-scale amenities.
“People might ask what Iowa has to do with Stockton,” Conner says of the city’s bid, “but we’re flat and we’re a farming community, and yes, we have corn.”
Conner remembers contributing as a high school youth to the campaign that brought the battleship Alabama to Mobile. Now he’s in favor of screening “Casablanca” on the deck of the battleship that took Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Casablanca Conference in 1943.
“I think it would be a wonderful experience, one that would bring back the era when Hollywood films were the chief entertainment for troops aboard a ship or on the battlefield,” Conner says. “It would be a great tie-in, a fun event, and I know it would draw quite a crowd.”
Stockton’s history has already been served with the renovation of the Hotel Stockton. Its distinctive red tiles and towers have defined the downtown landmark for almost a century. Here, skippers of yesteryear — including legendary author-adventurer Jack London — paused for refreshment on their way up and down the river that flows to the San Francisco Bay and north to Sacramento.
The hotel’s rooftop garden offers visitors one of the best views of a town on the move. Space has been reserved on the ground floor for Sacramento restaurateur Randy Paragary, who will open a new restaurant this year that will bolster a fine-dining scene highlighted by gourmet cuisine at Le Bistro, Japanese fusion fare at CoCoro, riverfront dining at La Spiaggia, and an authentic taste of France at chef Daniel Peron’s Taste of Brittany Creperie.
“Everything is evolving now,” says Douglass Wilhoit, CEO of the Greater Stockton Chamber of Commerce. “Our dreams are becoming realities. With the amenities we have and those we will have, we are taking our place as a destination not only for Californians, but for visitors from all over the world.”
The midtown University of the Pacific is another draw. Its multiple attractions include concerts, plays, lectures, films, art exhibits and sporting events (men’s basketball at the campus’s Alex G. Spanos Center is a must for hoops fans). The university’s annual Brubeck Festival (scheduled for April 3 through April 7 this year) is named in honor of alum and jazz great Dave Brubeck, who continues to lend inspiration to this popular program of workshops and concerts.
Another cherished musical attraction is the 79-year-old Stockton Symphony, flourishing under the baton of spirited maestro Peter Jaffe. Its concerts at Atherton Auditorium rank high on the list of city amenities.
So do productions at the Stockton Civic Theater and exhibitions at the Haggin Museum, a 75-year-old jewel in spacious Victory Park. Its recent shows have featured paintings of the American frontier and original prints by master photographer Ansel Adams. The museum’s ancient Egyptian mummy widens the eyes of younger visitors, but Director Tod Ruhstaller assures them it’s a friendly mummy.
Like Stockton, other cities are planning or upgrading recreational and cultural facilities to serve growing populations.
In neighboring Manteca, local athletes will soon be stepping up to the plate at Big League Dreams, an 80-acre sports park scheduled to open this fall. The park will include batting cages, six replica fields of famous ballparks, beach-volleyball courts and restaurants.
Notable attractions include the annual Delta Film Festival, featuring the work of independent filmmakers from around the world; the Syrah at Delicato Vineyards; and an October Pumpkin Festival. (Manteca celebrates the harvest as only a town that prides itself on being the pumpkin capital of the world can.)
“In the past, Manteca was a stop-off point for people on the way to Yosemite,” says Linda Abeldt, director of the Manteca Convention & Visitors Bureau, “but now, with our events and new places of interest, I think Manteca is giving them a reason to stop and enjoy the amenities.”
Lodi is the home of the annual Grape Festival and 60 area wineries, including the famous Robert Mondavi Winery and award-winning startups such as Grands Amis, where grape-growers Jonathan and Cathy Wetmore have quietly won praise from grape aficionados.
Visitors can learn about winemaking at the Lodi Wine & Visitor Center; catch a concert or a play at the elegant Hutchins Street Square complex; dine while listening to live music at the Rosewood Bar & Grill or the Lodi Beer Co.; hike, swim or fish at Lodi Lake; and have fun at the San Joaquin County Historical Museum or at Hill House, a Victorian mansion that preserves the style and atmosphere of times gone by.
Lodi’s charmingly remodeled downtown will soon be adding tasting rooms, jazz concerts and art shows to its lineup. Robin Knowlton believes her newly opened Knowlton Gallery, which features Central Valley artists, shares a symbiotic energy with ventures such as the Arch Brewery and the Grands Amis tasting room.
“One of the great things about Lodi is its sense of community, its many volunteers for sports and the arts, and its desire to keep the downtown alive as the heart of the city,” Knowlton says. “People want the amenities here. They don’t want to have to go out of town for them.”
In Tracy, an ongoing renovation of the 1923 Grand Theater and the restoration of its original organ are connecting the city with its classic entertainment tradition.
“We convinced the City Council that it was in the best interest of downtown Tracy to put the money into redoing the old Grand,” booster Gretchen Talley says of the project. When completed in 2007, it will include a 550-seat theater, an art gallery and studios for the performing arts.
“It’s going to be a really lovely building when it’s finished. I think it will rejuvenate downtown Tracy,” says Talley.
The list of projects for Tracy, says Andrew Malik, the city’s economic development director, includes a $22 million civic center remodeling, expected to be completed in November 2006; an aquatic center; and a mammoth sports facility of 200 acres with 23 baseball and softball fields, 15 soccer fields, four football fields and a stadium.
“When you’re competing with the Bay Area, it’s almost a given that you need to have some of these amenities,” Malik says, adding that Tracy would like to add a four-year university to its amenities list.
“It comes down to the quality of life in a community. As a resident, I have a sense of pride that these things are coming on line.”
Many visitors to the county get a taste of San Joaquin life at festivals and fairs offering an old-fashioned sense of agricultural pride and community hospitality.
Small-town friendliness and wilderness getaways are a plus for the many Bay Area commuters who have recently purchased homes in San Joaquin. Now, with the growth of sports and cultural amenities, the agricultural hinterland is looking more and more like the land of opportunity.
“People are coming over the hill for our food and entertainment,” says Kate Lewis, executive director of the Stockton Asparagus Festival. Last year 100,000 visitors consumed 20 tons of asparagus in three days.
The city, which turned its back on its downtown in a rush to the suburbs, has come back to its core, Lewis says, by fashioning a central location and reinventing the hometown festival, which moved from an outlying park two years ago.
“It’s telling us that we’re not the same Stockton,” Lewis says. “It’s getting more sophisticated and getting the amenities it deserves. It’s fun to have this all going on at the same time. The synergy is there now to make it happen.”
Stockton has taken a leadership role and acquired a can-do confidence that seemed inconceivable a few short years ago. Wilhoit says it’s having a ripple affect on the rest of the county, though some of Stockton’s neighbors need little encouragement.
“Ten years from now,” Knowlton says, “Lodi may just be the second Healdsburg or Napa, with its wine-grape industry and supporting retail and cultural amenities.”
Though Stockton won’t turn into San Francisco overnight, Snaith says, “there’ll be more amenities to meet the changing market that comes with the housing boom and demographics shift. Agriculture is not going to go away, but the town is changing with more educated and affluent people who will be looking for the galleries, the shows and restaurants that they expect to find here.”
They may not expect to find a battleship, but in a city riding the wave of its possibilities, nothing is too big to contemplate.
