Fontana Rejects Inland Empire Industrial Campus Next to High School

In a victory for NIMBY activists in the densest warehouse market in the US—the Inland Empire—Fontana’s City Council shot down a proposal to build three industrial facilities encompassing 541K SF on a site north of Santa Ana Avenue.

The council voted 3-2 against rezoning for industrial use a 24-acre site which stands adjacent to Jurapa Hills High School and to the west of Citrus High School between Citrus and Oleander avenues, The Sun reported.

The new distribution center was planned by Acacia Real Estate Group, a developer based in Newport Beach. Acadia’s proposed site, which is adjacent to the school’s baseball and softball fields, is zoned for 507 residential units. The site also is in proximity the Fontana Adult School.

According to the San Bernardino newspaper’s report, Acadia updated its proposal before the council vote, including additional space for landscaping between the northern boundary of the project and the south side of Jurapa Hills High. The developer also offered to increase the public benefit fee from $2.3M to $3M.

City leaders told The Sun they received dozens of letters and emails from residents in the area opposed to the warehouse project, expressing concerns about trucks idling and driving close to the playing fields.

The rejection of the Acadia project spared Jurapa Hills High from having warehouses on its southern as well as northern sides—two years ago, the Fontana council approved a 206K SF warehouse for a site on Slover and Oleander avenues, a project that spawned two lawsuits.

In March, the largest industrial project in Inland Empire—a 41M SF logistics hub of up to 27 buildings spread over 2,600 acres—got underway in Moreno Valley after developers cut a deal with environmental groups to build a sustainable project.

The appropriately named World Logistics Center will encompass nearly 10% of the land in Moreno Valley. The project is so large, its designers are connecting some of the buildings with a sky-bridge. The development also comes with an enormous price tag: $25B.

Moreno Valley-based developer Highland Fairview is planning to break ground this year on the mammoth industrial campus in proximity to the 60 Freeway between Redlands Boulevard and Gilman Springs Road, according to a report in the Riverside Press-Enterprise.

Located on the east side of the city, the World Logistics Center was delayed for several years by lawsuits filed by environmental groups after the Moreno Valley City Council approved the project in 2015.

The groups trying to block the warehouse mega-complex included the California Clean Energy Committee, Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society and the Coalition for Clean Air.

The lawsuits were settled in 2021 after Highland agreed to invest $47M to reduce the logistics center’s environmental impact, including investing $12 million in electric vehicles and charging stations.

Rhode Island-based design firm SanTec is promising a “future-ready” campus that embraces sustainability. World Logistics Center is aiming to be a carbon-neutral facility, with photovoltaic solar panels on warehouse rooftops and 1,080 EV charging stations; the campus also has set a goal of reducing water usage by 70%.

After ground is broken in Q4 2023, the developer has set an ambitious schedule that aims to complete the World Logistics Center in seven years: 6M SF per year in warehouse space will rise on the site each year until the complex is completed in 2030.