Developing a multi-tenant business campus requires a clear blueprint for site infrastructure, financial sustainability, and long-term tenant operations. Our newly completed Business Plan report, prepared by The Beck Group, outlines a phased development strategy to turn our 100-acre site near Camptonville into a thriving hub for the regional restoration economy.
The plan establishes a landlord-operator model where FBBC manages shared infrastructure—such as access roads, power, water systems, fire suppression, and truck scales—allowing independent wood products businesses to lower their initial startup costs and focus their capital on core operations. By mapping out phased capital investments, site preparation priorities, and cost-allocation frameworks, the report provides a practical roadmap for transforming forest restoration material into durable local jobs and value-added wood products.
A Highest-and-Best-Use Strategy for Forest Restoration
Central to the business plan is a highest-and-best-use approach to wood utilization. Rather than treating forest restoration material as an undifferentiated biomass stream, the campus layout is designed to direct incoming logs to their most practical and economic application:
Higher-Quality Sawlogs: Processed into regional and specialty lumber.
Straight, Small-Diameter Stems: Converted into agricultural posts, poles, and stakes.
Low-Grade Wood & Hardwoods: Manufactured into commercial bundled and bulk firewood.
Manufacturing Residuals: Utilized for bioenergy, heating, or secondary products like biochar and mulch.
This co-location model creates natural campus synergies, allowing the byproducts of one operation to serve as the raw material for another.
Core Opportunities Evaluated
The business plan incorporates technical and financial feasibility analyses for three complementary anchor opportunities:
Specialty Sawmill: Represents a major potential anchor facility capable of producing 35.5 MMBF of lumber annually, generating 55 local jobs, and producing vital residual streams (chips, bark, and sawdust) for neighboring campus tenants.
Commercial Firewood Operation: Offers a lower-risk, highly scalable entry point to produce bulk heating fuel and retail-bundled firewood for regional consumer and recreational markets.
Post-and-Pole Facility: Captures immediate value from small-diameter thinning material to supply California's agricultural, fencing, and vineyard sectors.
Building in Phases
To ensure long-term financial responsibility, campus development will proceed incrementally based on binding tenant commitments rather than speculative construction. Phased infrastructure expansion—estimated at $16.3M to $30.65M through full buildout—allows FBBC to establish critical utilities for initial tenants while preserving site flexibility as market demand grows.
Because base leasing income alone cannot fully fund major industrial site preparation, FBBC will utilize a blended funding strategy combining public infrastructure grants, tenant capital contributions, common-area maintenance pass-throughs, and utility reimbursements.
What's Next?
Near-term priorities focus on advancing site-level engineering, confirming groundwater yield and fire-flow capacity, establishing CEQA permitting pathways with Yuba County, and recruiting an initial anchor tenant.
By connecting forest restoration efforts across the North Yuba Watershed with private enterprise, the FBBC campus is positioned to build a stronger local economy and support healthier, more fire-resilient forests.
Explore the Research