Update: This terrible project was defeated in a vote by the March Joint Powers Authority commission on May 12, 2025. The land use authority transferred to the County on July 1. We will be watching it vigilantly to see what happens next. Sign up to stay informed.

The current plan proposed to the March Joint Powers Authority repurposes 800 acres of open land, occupied by March Air Force Base weapons storage. The proposal includes over 143 acres of industrial warehouses, 30 acres of business park, and over 23 acres of mixed-use space.  The land is surrounded on more than three sides by homes and directly adjacent to The Grove Community Church (pictured in the lower left-hand corner above). The developer supposedly modified the proposed project in "response to community feedback" given on June 12, 2024, but as you can see, nothing has fundamentally changed. At the heart of the project, the three Amazon-style mega-warehouses remain. Industrial acreage is identical to that of the original project. Coloring them gray in the new picture did not make them one square inch smaller.

Recently, the developer paid canvassers to drive in from L.A. to tell our neighborhood what to think of the project. They are trying to sell it as a new "Innovation Hub." Warehouses over a million square feet are good for one thing only—distribution centers. Keeping giant warehouses at the center of the project and calling it an "Innovation Hub" shows that the developer thinks our community is either blind or stupid. This is essentially the same project. 

The developers plan to pave Barton Rd through to Alessandro, which the builder anticipates will add over tens of thousands of cars to our neighborhoods daily.  They claim they will build a public park and a fire station, but these community benefits are part of an existing Settlement Agreement from 2003, which they left unfulfilled and are obligated to build regardless of what happens with the warehouses. They will preserve a buffer of conservation easement, because they were forced to concede this in a settlement agreement with the Center for Biological Diversity (for more information, click here).  The industrial warehouses would be on the scale of the Amazon warehouse recently built on Krameria south of Van Buren, stretching the length of our neighborhoods and dwarfing The Grove Community Church and surrounding homes. It would greatly increase truck traffic, noise, and pollution and disturb wildlife in the area including the threatened Stephen's kangaroo rat and the burrowing owl which is now being considered for designation as an endangered species.

The March Joint Powers Authority (JPA) is charged with repurposing the land from the former March Air Force Reserve Base and replacing the jobs lost in its closing. Per the March JPA website, when the base closed, 10,000 jobs were lost. March JPA has already repurposed much of the land and claims to be creating 30,000+ jobs.  

Enough is enough! Riverside does not need more warehouses, and since they have already more than fulfilled their mandate to replace more than the 10,000 jobs lost, there is no excuse for increasing the industrial encroachment on our open spaces and neighborhoods. 

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