A development longtime in the making, is finally seeing positive progress in the way of completion. West side Oakdale residents will soon be saying goodbye to empty lots and excessive weeds as the final 250 homes in the Bridle Ridge subdivision are completed.
City of Oakdale Senior Building and Fire Inspector, Brian Odom forecasts the subdivision which began in the early 2000s should finally be complete by fall of next year.
“Historically speaking by what’s been built, if we stay at this pace, we’ll be finished by next fall,” he stated. “I think that’s a realistic time frame.”
Odom noted that builders had initially hoped to be complete by this September, however pulled permits and sales do not support that goal.
In his 12 years with the City of Oakdale, the Senior Building and Fire Inspector shared he feels both comfortable and confident with the pace in which builders are selling and building homes. New home builders JKB Homes tends to hold the lions’ share of the property, with Lafferty Homes working on 49 of the lots.
“When the economy went to a screeching halt, a lot of the lots went back to the bank and a lot of builders went broke,” Odom said. “It’s definitely different, lenders are more strict with builders.
“Some of it’s driven by the lenders on how fast they can build,” he continued. “I believe the lenders have a lot of say in that now.”
The addition and completion of the 250 homes will do more than offer housing for families and positive cash flow in the area of sales, it will also ease up work on the city. During the time in which the lots sat vacant and owned by the bank, it was the City of Oakdale which kept a watchful eye and control over the unkempt land.
The empty lot at Crane and West F along the highway, however, still has yet to be claimed. Odom stated in spite of the rumors, there is currently nothing planned for that space.
“We’d like to see commercial,” he said. “We just have to find the right business that’s going to work there.”
And even through there have been delays along the way, especially when the crash hit, Odom said Oakdale still maintained some building.
“I can remember going to a building official meeting back in the 2012-2013 time frame,” he recalled, “we had 14 houses built that first year. I was so happy. Modesto had none at the time. Then it just kept rolling.”
Recent years have continued to see the growth continuing.
“We’re still shining,” Odom said of the 78 to 80 home completions from 2016 and again for 2017. “We’re still looking like rock stars. Things are coming back in other places. Oakdale can compete with anybody in the Central Valley as numbers go. You’d have to go to Tracy to look for numbers greater than this.”
