Raymus Homes has proposed building 97 houses on 21.17 acres at the southwest corner of Austin Road and a new connector street leading to Atherton Drive in Manteca. The project would mark the first city development proposed along Austin Road south of Highway 99, placing new rooftops on a stretch of the city that has largely sat undeveloped.
According to the Manteca Bulletin, the connector road tied to the Raymus proposal was built as part of the Austin Road interchange replacement project. Austin Road currently serves as Manteca's eastern city limits north of Highway 99, and land on both sides of the road south of the highway has remained largely undeveloped, the outlet reports.
The Raymus pitch does not stand alone. The report notes that Manteca is already reviewing plans for 276 homes on a parcel at 743 North Austin Road, in a project known as Austin Point. That development sits north of Sandra Street on the west side of Austin Road, between Louise Avenue and East Yosemite Avenue — also known as East Highway 120.
A Corridor Already Filling In With New Construction
Just up the road, Lennar Homes is already building the 797-home Cedar Point neighborhood between Van Ryn Road and East Yosemite Avenue, per the same Manteca Bulletin report. A related project, Yosemite Square, was approved for 797 homes on 137.7 acres northeast of the Austin Road and Highway 99 interchange, according to a separate Manteca Bulletin report. That developer agreed to make $7 million worth of improvements to Austin Road, and the lot count was trimmed from 814 to 797 after input from the community, City Council and Planning Commission.
The broader Austin Road corridor has long been eyed for large-scale growth. The outlet reports that the city zoned 1,080 acres along the corridor for residential development, zoning that could potentially accommodate housing for 10,500 people. The Raymus project, however, is not part of that 1,080-acre total, the report notes.
Older Plans Envisioned Homes, Business Park and Open Space
A draft master plan filed with the city years earlier offers a window into how officials once envisioned the corridor. The Austin Road Business Park and Residential Community master plan, dated 2010, describes the planning area as located at the intersection of Austin Road and State Highway 99 in San Joaquin County. That same document states the area comprises approximately 1,036 acres — a figure that does not match the 1,080-acre total reported by the Manteca Bulletin, and the available records do not reconcile the two numbers.
The 2010 plan laid out roughly 450 acres of residential development, 192 acres of commercial and retail development, and 312 acres of business-professional and industrial-park development. The plan also addressed development in the area and arterial street design. The document further states that, once adopted, its mandatory requirements and design guidelines would prevail over the Manteca Municipal Code wherever the two conflict.
What Comes Next for the Raymus Proposal
For now, the Raymus Homes proposal remains one of several projects reshaping a corridor that has sat largely dormant south of Highway 99. Between the 97 proposed homes, the 276 homes under review at Austin Point, the 797-home Cedar Point neighborhood under construction, and the approved 797-home Yosemite Square project, Austin Road is poised to look markedly different in the years ahead than it has for most of its history as Manteca's eastern edge.
