California’s wealthiest farm family plans mega-warehouse complex that would reshape Kern economy
California’s wealthiest farming family is proposing an expansion of industrial warehousing in Kern County that would fundamentally reshape the economy in the southern San Joaquin Valley.
Outside of Kern, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, the billionaire owners of the Wonderful Co., are better known for pomegranates and pistachios. But for more than a decade, they have also owned a master-planned industrial park in the city of Shafter, northwest of Bakersfield, that is home to distribution centers for Fortune 500 companies like Target, Amazon and Walmart.
Now, looking to capitalize on the seismic shift to online shopping, the Resnicks want to position Kern County as a new frontier for the industrial-scale warehousing that is key to connecting customers with their goods. Wonderful is pushing to more than double the size of its industrial park by converting 1,800 acres of its own almond groves into additional warehousing space.
Wonderful says its vision for a scaled-up Wonderful Industrial Park is wholly different from the thousands of sprawling distribution centers that have swallowed up neighborhoods in California’s Inland Empire. The influx of mega-warehouses in Riverside and San Bernardino counties has generated thousands of jobs — but also relentless truck traffic and poor air quality that have given rise to a backlash.
