Perris City Council Extends Warehouse Moratorium To December

The Perris City Council last week voted to extend its temporary moratorium on the approval, establishment and expansion of all industrial warehouse and distribution uses in the city for an additional 10 months and 15 days to December 9 of this year.

“Extending the more the moratorium is a critical and responsible action that will allow the city of Perris to continue to plan thoughtfully for sustainable development, protect residents from increasing environmental and health burdens and overall improve the quality of life in the city,” Tatiana Flores, a community organizer with the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, said at the January 13 meeting. “Perris has experienced cumulative impacts from years of industrial expansion, and a pause is necessary to ensure that future growth is meaningful, well thought out and aligns with community well being, environmental justice and the city’s long term infrastructure capacity.”

Flores was one of a handful of speakers at the public hearing, the majority of whom spoke in support of extending the moratorium.

The moratorium does not apply to projects with vested rights, which includes those with development agreements, vesting maps or grading or building permits ready to start construction, and there is also an exception for minor modifications to vested projects and existing constructed warehouse and distribution buildings including changes to the parking layout, interior tenant improvements or a reduction in the building’s square footage to meet a tenant’s needs.

The council also received an update on the actions the city has taken since the temporary moratorium was first approved at the December 9 meeting to a, which Director of Development Services Kenneth Phung said was a requirement of the urgency ordinance.

Two of those actions were finalized at that meeting. The council approved the second reading of two ordinances, the first updated the city’s industrial development guidelines and the second would require a conditional use permit for any industrial project over 50,000 square feet. The third, Phung said, is set to be completed later this year.

“The staff has been working on the circulation element update in compliance with what is called Assembly Bill 98 with the goal of setting and designing regulations for truck routes so that it minimizes impact to residential communities,” he said. “The plan is to bring that before the council mid of this year.”

Additionally, Phung said, staff had reached out to an environmental and traffic consultant to quantify the impacts of the high volume and speed of warehouse development over the past 20 years in the city in comparison to commercial and high density residential development.

“The purpose of those studies is to figure out if we should even further enhance a regulation or have other stipulations, such as requiring higher standards for roadway improvement, as part of industrial development,” he said.

The council still has the option to extend the moratorium once more for an additional year to December 9, 2027.