FAIRFIELD — Solano County’s economy has finally begun to show signs of improvement in the wake of Great Depression.
Unemployment dropped from a high of more than 12 percent in 2011 to just more than 8 percent in June. The county added 2,700 jobs from June 2012 to this June. It added 700 construction jobs. The big job-loser was government at 400 jobs lost.
State Sen. Lois Wolk on July 26 gave a talk to the Solano Economic Development Corp. breakfast. The occasion made for the most optimistic event of this type in five years. Wolk even said the state passed a budget on-time and without gimmicks.
“I haven’t been able to say that before,” Wolk said. “I have to give a lot of credit to the governor. He’s the adult in the room. He insists that the budget be balanced.”
Solano EDC President Sandy Person also sees improvements.
“The economy has made a turn,” Person said. “We’ve all kind of started feeling it.”
Because everyone has been in such an abyss for the past five or six years, people had to have confidence the turnabout was real, Person said. She’s convinced.
“It’s starting to hum,” Person said. “I think the hardest thing for us to navigate is we’ve had a depletion of resources to facilitate this type of activity.”
For example, she said, governments have lost planning, economic development and public works officials.
Among the projects the county has seen begin over the past year is the Solano Logistics Center in Fairfield on Cordelia Road. Sacramento-based Buzz Oates is building a $16 million, 318,000-square-foot building for Encore!Glass, which supplies wine bottles and packaging. It also plans to build a $24 million, 471,000-square-foot building for a future tenant.
An upcoming project is the Wagner Family of Wine winery on Cordelia Road. The family, which owns Caymus Vineyards in Napa Valley, plans to build a local winery that could produce up to 5 million gallons of wine annually. Construction is to start in 2014.
Homebuilding as of summer 2012 had yet to take off again. Still, application and permit work for the long-stalled Lagoon Valley project in Vacaville was being done by Standard Pacific.
“We’re excited about the future of the project and we’re looking forward to breaking ground in the next couple of years,” Standard Pacific spokeswoman Danielle Tocco also said.
Fairfield annexed land for its planned train station community that in coming decades is to have 6,800 homes, businesses, shops, parks and industry.
Fairfield has a new CarMax, which sells used cars, in its auto mall. Still, not all economic news is good . The city recently lost its Orchard Supply Hardware and its Kmart.
Some developments proposed for Solano County raised questions and concerns. The county wrestled over whether utility solar farms would conflict with agriculture.
Farming reached new heights for the county. The 2012 crop report listed a value of $343 million, an all-time high and a 17 percent increase from 2011. Leading the way were walnuts, calves and cattle and alfalfa.
Reach Barry Eberling at 427-6929 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/beberlingdr.
