Around Town … with Robert Airoldi: Gilroy residents have 60 days to share their thoughts on Great Wolf

Published in the September 6 – September 19, 2017 issue of Gilroy Life

Gilroy has plenty of attractions for visitors, including the Premium Outlets, Gilroy Gardens Family Theme Park, and the Gilroy Garlic Festival. A few years from now, we might add a new one with a Great Wolf Resorts water-themed play-park development in the western area of the community. Great Wolf Resorts has been considering several locations in Northern California but recently agreed to enter a 60-day exclusivity period with the city of Gilroy to fully assess the potential of building a resort here. During this period, the city and Great Wolf will discuss a potential public-private partnership.

The proposed resort would be located off Highway 152 in the beautiful Hecker Pass on land adjacent to Gilroy Gardens Family Theme Park. The resort would most likely follow a similar model to other Great Wolf Lodge resorts, including up to 700 family-friendly suites, a large indoor water park, conference facilities, shops, restaurants, and a variety of other attractions.
Representatives from the city of Gilroy and Great Wolf Resorts will be conducting community outreach programs in the coming weeks to gather feedback from a wide range of residents, community stakeholders, and local organizations.

“We’re proud that Gilroy has been selected as a potential location for this very popular family resort hotel,” said Gilroy Mayor Roland Velasco. “In the coming weeks, we will take a close look at the return on investment for the community and ensure that the project will have a positive impact on the quality of life for our residents.”

Great Wolf Lodge is an award-winning family resort destination that embraces time spent together as a family, creating cherished memories that will last a lifetime, said Bryson Heezen, director of development for Great Wolf Resorts.

“As we look to expand the Great Wolf Lodge experience to new audiences, we explored several potential locations in Northern California and feel Gilroy could be a great fit for our next resort,” he said.

We at Gilroy Life encourage the residents of Gilroy to learn more about the project and provide feedback during the evaluation period.If you’re in downtown, stop by the Gilroy Center for the Arts and check out the first part of the “Celebrate the Arts!” mural which is now done. The Leadership Gilroy Class of 2017 commissioned local artist Sheryl Cathers, owner of the dabble Art Center, to work on the 1,800 square foot city-owned wall adjacent to the Porcella’s Music store.

“I was very proud when I was asked by the Leadership Gilroy class to do the project,” Cathers told Gilroy Life Publisher Marty Cheek who is a student in this year’s class. “My biggest challenge is faces and hands so I challenged myself to put a lot of faces in it. I love painting kids. I work with kids all the time so it’s really fun to get their expressions and emotions into the painting. I think it’s exciting and colorful and youthful and vibrant.”

The photo shows Cathers (standing far left) along with class members and their spouses Iain Mylchreest, Linda Mylchreest, Lisa RodriQuez, Laura Langton, Rosemary Guerrero, Rob Allen, his wife, Gloria Connally, Nita Edde-Mitchell, and Cheek who helped Saturday Oct. 26 put anti-graffiti varnish on the mural.

The class decided to do the project to encourage local young people to get excited about the arts and to add to the attractiveness of the downtown.

Congratulations to Syngenta which celebrates 150 years in vegetable seeds. The company was founded in 1867 in the Netherlands as Sluis and Groot, which specialized in cabbage seeds. Syngenta purchased the family-owned flower-seed producer Goldsmith Seeds on Hecker Pass in 2008.

The year 1867 was a good one for plant production. We did a little online research on what happened 150 years ago and learned also that year the modern rose was born, with the introduction of the first hybrid tea rose Rosa La France by French rosarian Jean-Baptiste Guillot.

Today, Syngenta is one of the world’s leading seeds companies with 30 crop species and 2,500 varieties.

“We are very proud of our long heritage in vegetable seeds,” said Matthew Johnston, head of vegetable seeds and flowers at Syngenta. “For generations, we have been innovating to meet the needs of growers across the world. Today, more than ever, we are focused on bringing this innovation to our customers and to the entire value chain to help meet the consumer demand for high quality, tasty, nutritious vegetables available every day of the year.”

Syngenta has 2,400 employees around the world dedicated to its vegetable seeds enterprise. Research and development is conducted at several sites in key production regions of the U.S., including Woodland and Gilroy.
Happy birthday, Syngenta!