More than 15 years after city administrators first proposed converting a 94-acre parcel (from farmland, to industrial use), the Watsonville city council approved the development of a business park on the Manabe-Ow property. That land is on the northwestern edge of Watsonville.
City leaders hope the business park will generate more than 2 thousand jobs over the next 20 years. A number of people, who live in the adjacent community of Seaview Ranch, were unhappy with that decision.