Plan to build 1.84 million square feet of warehouses near Riverside put to vote – Press Enterprise

A sign at the proposed West Campus Upper Plateau project site urges people to attend a hearing on Wednesday, June 12, 2024 to oppose the project. That would add two warehouses totaling 1.84 million square feet near Riverside's Mission Grove and Orangecrest neighborhoods. (Photo by Jeff Horseman, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

Approval of a plan to build 1.84 million square feet of warehouse space on the edge of Riverside's Mission Grove and Orangecrest neighborhoods will be on a state agency's agenda Wednesday evening, June 12.

The March Joint Powers Commission is expected to take up the West Campus Upper Plateau project, which aims to transform 818 acres of what was formerly March Air Force Base property, including former munitions bunkers and a former castle castle. water, in a mixture of open spaces. , parks, logistics and commercial spaces.

At the center would be two warehouses, one with 1.25 million square feet and the other totaling 587,000 square feet. The project site borders Grove Community Church and is south of Alessandro Boulevard, west of Meridian Parkway, east of Barton Street and north of Grove Community Drive.

The warehouses, which would be 1,000 feet from any home, can accommodate logistics and manufacturing and “several large manufacturing companies” have expressed interest in occupying the buildings, said Grace Martin, executive director of the March Joint Powers Authority, in an email.

The project could potentially include a 725,561-square-foot distribution center and a 500,000-square-foot cold storage facility, according to the project's environmental impact report.

Martin said the project's developer, Lewis Management Corp. of Upland, does not intend to construct a cold storage facility or distribution center and that these uses represent the “most intensive use” of this land that must be analyzed for environmental planning purposes.

Besides logistics, the project “would include a lot of land uses” such as manufacturing, offices, financial institutions and retail, Martin said.

Fifty-five percent of the project “will be permanently preserved and accessible to the public for hiking and biking,” according to Randall Lewis, senior executive vice president of Lewis.

The project “significantly exceeds the City of Riverside's zoning requirements for building setbacks from industrial to residential,” includes “significant open space buffers” of at least 300 feet, and “exceeds all “Good neighbor guidelines established by local agencies,” Lewis said via email, adding that large buildings make up only 38 percent of buildable land.

Additionally, the project will contribute $30 million toward the design and construction of a 60-acre park and $10 million toward a new fire station, Lewis added.

Based on community feedback, the project “incorporates a number of additional mitigation measures to reduce air quality” and greenhouse gas emissions, Lewis said, adding that the project will add infrastructure to use recycled water.

The project sits on land controlled by the authority, a public agency created to redevelop 3,500 government surplus lands left when March was reduced to an air reserve base in the 1990s.

The commission overseeing the authority is made up of eight elected officials from Riverside County, Riverside, Perris and Moreno Valley, all jurisdictions bordering land managed by the authority. He will decide whether the project goes ahead.

Hoping that's not the case, Riverside Neighbors Opsing Warehouses, a coalition of residents who live near the project site.

The coalition is mobilizing people to attend the June 12 hearing, which begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Moreno Valley Conference & Recreation Center, 14075 Frederick St., in Moreno Valley.

Mike McCarthy, a Riverside environmental consultant and coalition member, fears the project could bring as much as 4.8 million square feet of warehouses — a figure disputed by Martin — to an area already saturated with warehouses.

A 600,000-square-foot logistics project under construction nearby is already “cutting off traffic” and “blocking open space,” McCarthy said.

“This project is eight times bigger. Construction is expected to take five years,” he said. “They're going to be blasting for up to 12 hours a day… They're going to be grading this area, digging up to 50 feet deep into the bedrock in order to level it.

“So the construction phase alone is going to be a nuisance to the neighborhood for five years, and then the operational phase will be after that – there will be more mega-warehouses creating traffic, noise and pollution for 50 years.”

The project site is not far from the junction of Highways 215 and 60 between Riverside and Moreno Valley. This area is home to a cluster of large warehouses and about 1 billion square feet of logistics already built in the Inland Empire.

Land earmarked for the project would be better used for homes or “something that benefits and enhances the community rather than harming it,” McCarthy said.