New travel stop coming to Highway 41 at Tesoro Viejo. See what’s under construction

A travel stop under construction on Highway 41 will bring a new fuel station with a neighborhood market and a popular fresh juice chain to the growing southeast Madera County corridor, according to an announcement from the Tesoro Viejo community.

The Yosemite Travel Center will be located on the southeast corner of the intersection of Highway 41 and Tesoro Viejo Boulevard, which extends from Avenue 15 into the expansive master-planned community. The travel center could be completed early this spring, Tesoro Viejo said in a news release last fall.

The announcement said the travel center will feature a 76 fuel station with six pumps and 12 fueling spaces. It will also feature a neighborhood market with “healthy food options,” a drive-thru car wash and a Jamba Juice, the announcement said.

“This new center will bring a range of conveniences to the community that will serve the needs of the area,” Brent McCaffrey, president of Tesoro Viejo Development, said in the release.

Peter Singh, the center’s owner, said in the release that the travel stop will serve area residents as well as tourists traveling Highway 41 on their way to Yosemite National Park.

The travel center will add to the commercial growth of Madera County’s Highway 41 corridor, which in recent years has experienced a population boom with the increase of new homes in Tesoro Viejo and Riverstone, another master-planned community just a few miles south.

As of May of last year, Madera County had issued 1,346 building permits in Tesoro Viejo, which intends to add more than 5,000 homes at full build-out. The county at that time had issued 3,360 building permits in Riverstone, which intends to add more than 6,500 homes at full build-out.

Both communities have planned space for businesses that will serve what’s known as the Rio Mesa area, which has been planned for 30,000 homes and 100,000 residents — Madera County’s next city, some area residents have called it.

Last year, Riverstone announced it will bring the first grocery store to the area. The community said then it expected construction on a 40,000-square-foot Raley’s supermarket to begin this year.

Erik Galicia

The Fresno Bee

Erik is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, where he helped launch an effort to better meet the news needs of Spanish-speaking immigrants. Before that, he served as editor-in-chief of his community college student newspaper, Riverside City College Viewpoints, where he covered the impacts of the Salton Sea’s decline on its adjacent farm worker communities in the Southern California desert. Erik’s work is supported through the California Local News Fellowship program.