The expansion of the Wonderful Amenities Center is set to enhance services and job opportunities in Kern County, while future changes will add even more jobs to the area.
- Ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Wonderful Amenities Center took place at the Wonderful Logistics Center on Thursday.
- Continued expansion of the center will bolster job growth and economic development in Shafter and Kern County.
- John Guinn highlighted the vision behind the center, emphasizing its role as a service hub.
- Shafter City Manager Lance Lippincott noted the Logistic Center's positive impact on local job creation and tax revenue.
- Wonderful plans to double the logistics center's footprint in the next decade and provide enough space to add tens of thousands of jobs over the next twenty years.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
A ribbon cutting for the expansion of the Wonderful Amenities Center at the Wonderful Logistics Center, formerly known as the Wonderful Industrial Park, I'm Sam Hoyle, the expansion is just part of the company's footprint that's continued to bolster job growth and economic development not just in Shafter, but all across Kern County.
23ABC spoke with John Guinn, the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Wonderful Real Estate, and former Shafter City Manager who said back when the land was just a dirt plot, the vision for something like this in Shafter was always there.
"In many ways it's turned out to be better, it's a beautiful facility, we have great private partners. I couldn't have asked it to turn out any better and it really is just starting."
The newly minted amenities center is meant to serve as a hub for residents and Wonderful employees in the region to access a variety of services under the Wonderful brand. Along with that, the Wonderful Career Center is a key factor, partnering with schools like Shafter High School and Bakersfield College to help increase opportunities for Kern County scholars to continue to learn and grow in the central valley.
For Shafter City Manager Lance Lippincott, the continued expansion of the Logistics Center provides a unique opportunity for the city: increasing access to services for residents, accounting for the bulk of the city's tax revenue and providing jobs not just for residents of Shafter, but all over the area.
"Shafter is one of the few cities in the central valley where more workers commute in every day than commute out, that's absolutely not common at all," said Lippincott. "Here not only are we providing jobs for our residents with Wonderful, but we're providing jobs for all of the surrounding communities as well. Their continued build out, I've heard numbers from Wonderful of up to 50 thousand workers at full buildout."
The Logistics Center, which is home to major distribution centers for companies like Target, Walmart and Amazon, houses over 13,000 jobs across 1,600 acres. Inside the next decade, the company says it plans to double its footprint and as Lippincott noted, increase the number of available jobs in the region.
This isn't the only expansion to come to the Logistics Center, according to a spokesperson for the Wonderful Company, the Logistics Center is expected to double in size over the next decade and applications have already been filed to start it.
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