The Future Employment Hub in Brentwood

City officials hope that the long-awaited Innovation Center at Brentwood project will soon become a reality. Recently, the City Council updated the Innovation Center at Brentwood Specific Plan to jumpstart development of this important development project. As part of the effort the City Council set aside over $25 million for infrastructure improvements, including constructing the Sand Creek Road extension. This key roadway will connect Sand Creek to Heidorn Ranch Road, and Lone Tree Way at Kaiser hospital.

The Innovation Center at Brentwood is a 400-acre mixed-use project located along Highway 4, south of Lone Tree Way and north of Sand Creek Road, intended to attract development for a “next-generation” business park.

According to plan analysis details, the project is expected to attract over 8,000 jobs to East Contra Costa County and will also include the integration of 2,000 new housing units, local street and transportation improvements and a planned BART station in the area.

“The Innovation Center is going to be the core mechanism to attract high-paying, corporate, life science, med-tech, fin-tech and other quality jobs and industries to Brentwood,” said Brentwood Mayor Joel Bryant. “It is designed to cut the commute of our residents and allow them to improve their quality of life by working closer to home.”

The project has been on the drawing board for over two decades, when the Innovation Center at Brentwood was known as “Special Planning Area P” in the City of Brentwood’s 2001 General Plan.

The location was already designated as a major employment area, providing land for regional commercial and professional office use, manufacturing and complementary integrated housing.

Today, Brentwood’s labor force has grown to three times the countywide growth rate, and the labor pool within a 20-minute drive of the area includes over 167,000 people, statistics show.

“The City of Brentwood has always had an eye on generating jobs close to home,” said Economic Development Manager Ricardo Noguera. “The Innovation Center, and its encompassing land area of 400 acres, will be built over time and as market conditions are ripe for various types of development. The City of Brentwood’s interest in developing a next-generation office and technology park by collaborating with the property owners, developers and businesses is a bold vision for the future of the community.”

Harvest Time is a local non-profit organization founded in 1976 with the goal of helping to educate people about farming and its products, according to their website.

Organization President Jessica Enos, who was elected in 2022, described how the organization began with only 10 members, five of whom served on the first board. The board consisted of: Jack Bloomfield, Tino Bacchini, Lee Laird, Gene Stonebarger Sr., and John Slatten. Since then, the group has continued to grow and now has 60 members.

Past

Since the early 1970s, U-Pick has been a major aspect of many of the farms that are members of Harvest Time, and U-Pick has only continued to grow. The oldest existing U-Pick in the Brentwood area, however, dates to the 1940s with a peach orchard that brought many into the area with the hope of being able to use their rationed sugar to can peaches. Local historian Carol Jensen has conducted research and found that this peach orchard is the oldest example of a U-Pick west of the Allegheny Mountains.

In the 1970s, due to an increased cherry crop, more farmers opened up their farms as U-Picks, according to Enos. Instead of charging by the pound like they do now, they charged by the bucket.

But these farmers had to decide how to get the word out about their U-Pick opportunities, leading to the creation of Harvest Time and a map that helped show all the local U-Pick farms. Since its founding, the growth of Harvest Time has been driven increasingly by “people wanting to know where their food comes from,” Enos said. More details about Harvest Time can be found on their website, https://harvestforyou.com/.

Present

Harvest Time hopes to celebrate the Brentwood area’s long agricultural heritage through a recent initiative declaring the area as the U-Pick capital. Brent wood and its surrounding ar eas have one of the largest concentrations of U-Pick farms in such a small area, according to Enos.

“I think that for our area, it gives us a tangible name for something that we all already knew,” Enos said of the title. “We could not be more proud.”

The title comes after four years of research. The organization looked into the history of the Brentwood area and other areas across the country to determine whether or not Brentwood was the oldest U-pick area in America. The only