Plans to potentially build warehouses on ex-military land bordering two Riverside neighborhoods are officially back on the table.
The March Joint Powers Commission on Wednesday, March 5, voted to put the West Campus Upper Plateau project on a future agenda, possibly in May.
The project has been in limbo since June, when commissioners voted to table it after a public hearing attended by hundreds, many of whom waved “No More Warehouses” signs.
The project’s developer, Lewis Management Corp. of Upland, tried unsuccessfully to get the commission to un-table the project in January. At the time, Timothy Reeves, a Lewis representative, said the developer wanted to present changes to the original plans to the public.
On Wednesday, Reeves asked for a May 7 public hearing. He said the developer is committed to reaching out to the public before then to explain project changes.
Lewis “raised the concern” that tabling the project violated due process “by precluding any avenue to a final decision … giving rise to an unlawful moratorium — or worse, a de facto denial — of the project without a hearing or findings,” read a commission report.
The commission’s lawyer, Thomas Rice, said in June that tabling the project “would be a lot like a denial.”
The commission, which consists of Riverside County Supervisors Yxstian Gutierrez and Jose Medina and councilmembers from Perris, Riverside and Moreno Valley, oversees the March Joint Powers Authority, a public agency tasked with redeveloping land that used to be part of March Air Force Base before its 1990s downsizing.
With most of the ex-military land now home to dozens of businesses, parks, trails, senior housing, a Metrolink station and other infrastructure, the authority is set to dissolve in July, putting the project up against the clock to get approval in just a few months.
Lewis’s project would develop part of a largely vacant 818-acre site — the main structures left are former munitions bunkers — south of Alessandro Boulevard, west of Meridian Parkway, east of Barton Street and north of Grove Community Drive. The Grove Community Church borders the site to the south.
Plans called for two buildings — one being 1.25 million square feet, the other totaling 587,000 square feet — envisioned for warehousing or manufacturing.
According to Lewis, 55% of the project would be permanently conserved and accessible to the public for biking and hiking. As a condition of approval, the project would contribute $30 million toward designing and building a 60-acre park and $10 million for a new three-bay fire station.
The project faces grassroots opposition from residents who don’t want to live near more large warehouses.
There’s already a large logistics presence in the Inland Empire, especially along the 215 Freeway corridor, and critics fear Lewis’s project would inundate roads with truck traffic and pollute the air with diesel exhaust from big rigs supplying warehouses.
“Why should we trust that anything has substantively changed” about the project, said Jen Larratt-Smith of Riverside Neighbors Opposing Warehouses. “Please don’t make me galvanize 600 people to show up in opposition again. You already know how the community feels about this.”
Supporting the project are construction trade unions, who see an opportunity to create high-paying local jobs for workers who often have to leave the Inland Empire for a decent wage. Orange-vested construction workers showed up at Wednesday’s meeting to ask commissioners to un-table the project.
Commissioner and Riverside City Councilmember Chuck Conder supported putting the project on a future agenda.
“We can’t talk about this until it’s un-tabled,” he said. “We don’t know what the new changes are.”
By un-tabling, “We can hear what’s going on and keep ourselves out of more legal challenges,” Conder added.
The commission voted 7-1, with Perris City Councilmember Marisela Nava opposed, to un-table the project.
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