Imagine how many warehouses there are in Riverside County. Now add another 745 football fields worth of warehouses to that number.
That’s how much new logistics space is potentially on the county’s horizon, according to Riverside environmental consultant Mike McCarthy.
Using publicly available data, McCarthy found that Riverside County is home to seven of the 10 biggest warehouse projects being studied for their environmental impact in California.
The projects, stretching from the desert city of Cathedral City to the Temescal Valley south of Corona, don’t include what’s already been approved, including the World Logistics Center, which will add 40 million square feet of warehouses to eastern Moreno Valley.
It’s enough to make McCarthy, a critic of adding warehouses, question how the county is going to handle it all.
“There’s already a ton of warehouses in the pipeline, and then we’re going to add a whole bunch more onto it, and I just don’t see that we have the infrastructure to handle it,” he said.
Alicia Aguayo, a spokesperson for the San Bernardino-based People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, lamented the prospect of more warehouses in a logistics-saturated Inland Empire.
“It’s unfortunate that the industry continues to expand in our backyards because we do not have the protections or reassurance that there will be enough mitigations to offset more toxins into a region with the worst air quality,” Aguayo said via email.
More warehouses means more jobs, argued Paul Granillo, president and CEO of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership.
He cited a new U.S. Chamber of Commerce study, which found that, among other benefits, a new Inland distribution center creates more than 3,300 jobs outside the warehouse and generates $51 million in local tax revenue.
“We have to find a way to appreciate the upside of the economic impact of logistics and make sure we’re mitigating against the downside,” Granillo said.
The projects on McCarthy’s list are subject to downsizing and changes if and when they are approved, and it’s possible they won’t entirely consist of warehouses, since warehouses’ industrial zoning opens the door for manufacturing or other non-logistics uses.
Who approves the projects depends on where they are. Cities have land-use authority within their boundaries while the counties control what gets built in unincorporated areas.
An hour’s drive from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the Inland Empire — home to rail yards, freeways, plenty of flat undeveloped land and a blue-collar workforce — is home to a massive logistics industry with few peers worldwide.
As of 2022, the region had an estimated 1 billion square feet of warehouses. A steady stream of big rigs supply warehouses approaching 1 million square feet or larger, providing local jobs for thousands of workers fulfilling online orders for Amazon, big box stores and other retailers.
Logistics is credited with helping the Inland economy avoid the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and companies like Amazon argue that their Inland facilities offer a ticket to a free college education and a middle-class life.
Critics counter that most warehouse jobs offer substandard wages and benefits in hazardous work conditions. Warehouses also are blamed for noise and light pollution, and emissions from warehouse-bound, diesel-powered trucks are linked to cancer, heart disease and other health problems.
To make his top 10 list, McCarthy used data from CEQAnet, a state database of projects needing a California Environmental Quality Act review before they can be approved.
Large warehouses often need environmental impact reports or EIRs — in-depth studies, hundreds or thousands of pages in length, that analyze what a project will do to the local environment if built.
Topping McCarthy’s list is the Westside Annexation project in unincorporated Los Angeles County. The project near Lancaster would add up to 38.5 million square feet of warehouses.
Next is a 24.8 million-square-foot project in Northern California. Third on the list is the San Jacinto Commerce Center, a 9 million-square-foot project sought for 514 acres between Record Road, Odell Avenue, Sanderson Avenue and Cottonwood Road.
The next six projects are in Riverside County:
- CV Conference Center in Cathedral City (7.9 million square feet)
- Serrano Commerce Center in the Temescal Valley (6.5 million square feet)
- Beaumont Heights Business Centre Project in Beaumont (5.7 million square feet)
- Harvest Landing Retail Center & Business Park Project in Perris (5.7 million square feet)
- Mesa Verde Specific Plan in Calimesa (4.4 million square feet)
- New Perris Commerce Center Specific Plan Project in Perris (3.7 million square feet)
In all, the Riverside County projects total 42.9 million square feet. Also making the list is the Lake Creek Logistics Center project — 3.5 million square feet — in the San Bernardino County High Desert community of Apple Valley.
McCarthy said it’s possible warehouse developers are eyeing Riverside County “because there’s a little bit more undeveloped land in Riverside County than in the inland parts of San Bernardino County.”
His list doesn’t include projects in various stages of development in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. For example, there’s the 3.2 million-square-foot Bloomington Business Park in unincorporated San Bernardino County.
The list also doesn’t include the 7.3 million-square foot Stoneridge Commerce Center sought for the unincorporated Riverside County community of Nuevo and the West Campus Upper Plateau, a 4.7 million-square-foot project envisioned for ex-March Air Force Base land near Riverside that’s currently stalled.
McCarthy worries Riverside County is ill-prepared for more warehouses.
“There’s the air quality impacts, there’s the land use impacts, the environmental justice impacts … and just the congestion and traffic impacts,” he said. “And so each of these individual projects have all of those problems. But put them all together and it just amplifies it.”
Unlike San Bernardino County, which has more rail infrastructure, more goods would have to be moved in Riverside County by truck, McCarthy said, adding that warehouses are being built further and further from the ports, requiring longer truck trips.
“It’s the worst kind of logistics sprawl,” he said. “So I think the question is, what is the overall plan?”
Riverside County analyzes development projects on a case-by-case basis and tailors conditions of approval — landscape buffers and noise limits, for example — to each project’s location, John Hildebrand, county planning director, said via email.
“Roadways are widened and utilities are installed or upsized to accommodate the growth,” Hildebrand said, adding the county uses “good neighbor” standards to ensure warehouses in unincorporated areas are compatible with their surroundings.
He also noted that a new state law, AB 98, sets development standards for new warehouses requiring landscape buffers and other measures to lessen the effect on neighborhoods.
