In 24 hours, two Bay Area firms announce significant manufacturing expansions in the Central Valley

Big announcements for Lodi and Elk Grove on consecutive days.  Could it be a harbinger of things to come for the Northern California Mega-region?

NEC seems likely to build a significant manufacturing facility near the Elk Grove "ghost mall".

Sac Bee story... Elk Grove officials have signed a tentative deal with a Bay Area tech company to bring 2,500 manufacturing jobs to the city. Mayor Gary Davis said the possible deal is with NRC Manufacturing, a circuit board maker in Fremont that has worked with Apple.

Sac Business Journal story... The deal could establish Elk Grove as an affordable place for technology companies to scale up manufacturing that has been developed in Silicon Valley, said Barry Broome, CEO of the Greater Sacramento Area Economic Council. He helped get the deal rolling by meeting with NRC officials in Fremont to pitch Elk Grove as a location. With Apple's nearby plant, which recently began an expansion, "now you have a situation where you start to create a trend," Broome said. Elk Grove has 165,000 residents and only 45,000 jobs, Davis noted. The recruitment is especially significant for a city known for years as a bedroom community that also bore a disproportionate hit during the 2008 mortgage crisis. NRC Manufacturing employs just 18 people in Fremont, where it operates in a 12,000-square-foot site. But the company plans to shift from manufacturing prototypes to a full-scale manufacturing operation.

And a Sunnyvale based biotech firm investing and expanding in Lodi. 

Cepheid, a Sunnyvale-based producer of medical diagnostic products, is expanding its Lodi manufacturing operation, looking to grow to about 500 employees in two to three years from the current 230 workers, the company and area business officials said.

 

With its existing facility at 225 N. Guild Ave., Cepheid purchased two buildings to the south on Guild Avenue that have been vacant since 2008 when Blue Shield left to occupy its new facility in south Lodi.

Those include a 40,000-square-foot building to be used for manufacturing, essentially an extension of production now done in Sunnyvale, and a 32,000-square-foot building to be used for administrative offices, meetings and training.