In January 2016, I was given the opportunity by Mr. Frank Tripicchio to work on a site analysis project on a property in Bakersfield, CA. The objective was to create recommendations on best uses for the property through demographic and economic analysis. To help me with this report, I brought on Oliver Yang, who worked with PKF Hospitality Consulting.

 

The Project

The site is located on the Southwestern corner of the intersection between Highway 178 and Comanche Dr., about 5 miles away from downtown Bakersfield. It is an undeveloped, five-acre parcel with two residential communities in the immediate area. I conducted spatial analysis with data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the City of Bakersfield to visualize the current building and zoning conditions in the area as well as the demographic distributions. We assessed community needs by looking at current services, businesses, and retail in the area and found a gap in the supply. As the site is fairly remote, there is a lack of businesses servicing the area.

There are around 3000 residential rooftops in the surrounding 2 mile zone but a lack of strip malls or neighborhood services in the vicinity. Though there are more residential zones in the area, currently there is not much development occurring in the area.

The majority of the land, vacant or developed, within the vicinity is zoning for residential. This means that the project site is valuable, once developed, for providing general services to the communities in the area. Though there are other commercial lands available, they are mostly undeveloped. This provides the project site with a unique opportunity to seize the current market and develop as a community anchor.

To identify possible competition from other developments, we obtained information from LoopNet and the City of Bakersfield. We were able to located commercial properties in the area and the area’s future economic development projections. With this information we developed several recommendations on possible developments for the current property owner.