A fertile field in the Central Valley

ABDEL Salem is hunched over a small aerial map in his office, divining the future.

“This is going to be new,” he says, gesturing toward a blank spot that’s slated to be the site of 1,700 residences, a park and a school. His finger glides across the paper. “This is going to be new too,” he adds, pointing to another vacant part of the map that’s poised for a burst of commercial construction. He stabs at the paper again. “And this is going to be new over here.”

Salem is the city manager of Delano, which is easily among the strangest boomtowns in California.

The second-largest municipality in Kern County (behind Bakersfield, which lies about 30 miles south), Delano is as good an illustration as you’ll find of how shifting demographics are spurring development -- and raising hopes -- in California’s interior.

Although it once seemed that the best way to spark the economy here was to have the state erect two prisons -- North Kern and Kern Valley -- this city of 49,000 now has no fewer than 35 major building projects in the pipeline, including a giant shopping center. Hundreds of homes are being added each year as families spill over from the coast in search of affordable housing.

“We know the people are coming,” Salem says. “The Central Valley is the last frontier.”

Despite the bustle, however, Delano is down at the heel. Its unemployment rate stands at around 20%, far higher than the county’s overall mark of 6.9%. The median per-capita income in the city is about $11,000 -- just a shade above the federal poverty line. Since 2000, annual population increases have outstripped the creation of jobs (2.8% on average compared with 1.7%). Tumbledown shacks dot the outskirts of town.

What’s abundantly clear is that an influx of residents “isn’t necessarily a key to prosperity,” says Carol Whiteside, president of the Great Valley Center, a Modesto-based group trying to promote the region’s well-being.

Meanwhile, the pathologies that tend to go hand in hand with privation have descended upon Delano. Among them is gang violence. When I got my hair trimmed the other day at Firme’s Barber Shop, just off Main Street, the buzz was about how students were recently put on alert and shooed straight home from school. The reason: Police feared that Los Angeles gang members might make the two-hour drive to Delano and start shooting in retaliation for a MySpace posting they deemed offensive.

This juxtaposition -- growth amid gloom -- points up the enormous opportunities and challenges facing not only Delano but also much of inland California.

Extending from Riverside to Redding, the area “is perhaps the greatest untapped outlet for upward mobility in the Golden State,” declared a report last month from the Brookings Institution. If our leaders are smart about how they plan and invest, this vast stretch can be a place that provides decent jobs, a strong sense of community and a shot at homeownership.

But if they goof up, the cost will be high. How this part of California fares, the Brookings study noted, “may determine whether the state remains competitive and a beacon of opportunity in the early decades of the 21st century.”

Complicating matters is that these 75,000 square miles are far from homogenous. The rural reaches of the Central Valley, in particular, trail far behind the Inland Empire and the Sacramento suburbs in their economic vitality.

For Salem and his staff, this has meant trying to pull off an extraordinary juggling act as they deal with one difficult decision after another. How, for example, do you raise enough tax revenue to provide better infrastructure if companies won’t -- or can’t -- come to town because the infrastructure is so crummy?

This is more than hypothetical. Four manufacturers have expressed an interest in moving to a tract on the west side of town. But only two parcels are hooked up to the sewer and water system.

“It’s always this chicken-and-egg thing,” says Roland Burkert, manager of Delano’s recently expanded enterprise zone, which offers generous state tax breaks to businesses that locate and hire in the city.

Salem’s answer is to try to make a chicken omelet -- that is, to stimulate a whole range of economic activity all at once: commercial, residential and industrial, with one project feeding off and reinforcing the next.

A bundle of energy at age 65, the Egyptian native arrived in Delano about four years ago from El Centro, along the Mexican border, where he had been city manager for more than two decades. He is friendly but no-nonsense, telling developers that fee increases are in the offing to fund badly needed city services. No exceptions, even for the politically connected.

He pays attention to the little things (cajoling businessmen to put in soccer fields to give kids something to do) without losing sight of the big things: seeking to have Delano, the scene of Cesar Chavez’s historic 1960s clash with grape growers, build on its agricultural heritage by incorporating food processing and storage into its economic blueprint.

But for all of Salem’s experience and talent, achieving success is a constant struggle.

Nowhere is that more apparent than on an empty, 200-acre lot near Highway 99, which the city is determined to turn into the Delano Marketplace. The complex is supposed to include a Wal-Mart Supercenter (complete with grocery), Lowe’s, Panda Express, Starbucks, Burger King and more.

It may not sound like much, but luring these retailers would constitute substantial progress in Delano. Beyond the jobs, “the city is really in need of stores” that sell bedding, electronics and a slew of other items, says Geary Coats, director of development for YK America International Group Inc., the firm behind the Marketplace.

Delano has determined that it loses about $200 million a year in taxable sales from residents’ shopping in other locales, principally Bakersfield. The Marketplace would help staunch this “leakage” and give the city some of the income it needs to hatch its other long-range plans.

“The citizens have been clamoring: ‘We want better things for Delano,’ ” says Mayor Pedro Rios.

But for the Marketplace to reach fruition, it’s going to require about $70 million in highway and street upgrades. Salem and others are locked in negotiations with state transportation officials, and it’s far from certain where the money is going to come from. (The city manager is angling to have the improvements done in phases.)

If the city does ultimately secure the funding, that will only raise another quandary: How do you ensure that Wal-Mart doesn’t devour the mom-and-pop businesses downtown, which Salem and Rios are also looking to revive? “Merchants are worried,” says John An, who owns a small apparel store in the heart of Delano.

For all the thorny questions, Salem remains ebullient, if occasionally exhausted.

“Momentum,” he says, “is on the side of the city.” No one doubts that. The issue for Delano -- and indeed for all the valley -- is how not to squander it.

Rick Wartzman, whose column appears in the Business section regularly on Fridays, is an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation. He is reachable at rick.wartzman@ latimes.com.