The Hemet City Council voted Tuesday night, April 8, to reject a study needed to build two large warehouses that faced determined pushback from logistics-weary residents.
The council’s 5-0 vote, which came at the end of a seven-hour meeting featuring dozens of speakers, declined to certify an environmental impact report for the Newland Simpson project.
The vote ends the project, City Attorney Steven Graham Pacifico told councilmembers.
Proposed by Newland Capital Group, of Irvine, the project would have built two warehouses totaling 1.19 million square feet, along with an 8.9-acre trailer parking lot, on a 75-acre site in the southwest portion of Hemet near the junction of Warren and Simpson roads and Domenigoni Parkway.
A likely tenant would have been Rialto Pacific LLC, a logistics company specializing in products such as textiles and apparel for large retailers like Costco, Target and Walmart, a city report states.
The tenant “is definitely looking to hire in this community,” Newland CEO and Managing Partner Ty Newland told councilmembers Tuesday.
Newland added: “We look at (this project) as a huge investment into the community. We aren’t here to build, flip and move on. We’re looking here to build something and own it for 30, 40 (or) 50 years, and make a huge investment into the community along with the tenant.”
Hemet’s planning commission in December voted unanimously to recommend the council turn down the project. Commissioners raised concerns about the project’s effect on the environment, traffic and its neighbors, the city report states.
An attorney for residents of the Solera Diamond Valley community urged councilmembers to vote no.
In a letter to the city, attorney Abigail Smith wrote the project “will bring an onslaught of vehicles and big rig trucks to a rural residential area that lacks adequate road infrastructure to accommodate substantial traffic volumes.”
Smith added the project’s “logistics’ use is fundamentally incompatible with the character of the surrounding area that is agricultural and residential.”
Protesters opposed to the warehouses picketed the project site Friday, April 4. Opponents also filled the council meeting room Tuesday night — some waving signs with anti-warehouse slogans.
During the meeting, residents argued the city didn’t need more warehouses, which they feared would blight the landscape, choke roads with truck traffic and sully the air with toxic diesel truck exhaust.
Others doubted whether the warehouses would deliver the good-paying jobs and other economic benefits promised by the developer.
Project supporters included construction trade union members, who wore orange safety vests at Tuesday’s meeting. The project, they said, would offer them jobs with quality pay and benefits close to home, negating the need to drive hours to construction sites.
After the public spoke, council members criticized the project’s size, its fit with the surrounding area and the truck traffic it would generate.
“Hemet deserves better,” Councilmember Carole Kendrick said. “I don’t know what more the applicant can do. But I would agree that I’m not in a position to recommend certifying” the environmental study.
Councilmember Joe Males said that, while he wants businesses to come to Hemet, “This is just a monstrosity that nobody wants. It’s just too big.”
Jean Faenza, who opposed the project, praised the council and planning commission for their votes.
“This is an amazing win for the Hemet community at large,” she said via email. “Now our City Council can get back to the business of growing our city in positive ways!”
Tuesday’s vote comes amid concerns from Hemet residents, and many in Riverside County, that the Inland Empire is inundated with mega-warehouses they blame for traffic gridlock and air pollution in a region plagued by notoriously poor air quality.
In December, the council imposed a 45-day moratorium on warehouses not already in the planning pipeline so officials could develop more rules governing warehouse construction. Councilmembers extended that moratorium by 10 months in January.
