Lake Elsinore City Council Approves Warehouse Project Adjacent To Lakeland Village

The Lake Elsinore City Council last month unanimously approved an industrial project consisting of two commercial manufacturing warehouses at the intersection of Grand Avenue and Kathryn Way, adjacent to the unincorporated community of Lakeland Village. 

“The owner and applicant has cleaned up this area, and this project will bring jobs,” Mayor Pro Tem Robert “Bob” Magee said at the November 18 meeting. “We are under-jobbed in this particular area. We need more.”

The project, located on a 6.77-acre plot of land, is set to be constructed in two phases. The first phase would include a 46,276-square-foot building intended for commercial manufacturing use, two 60-foot-long loading docks at the rear of the building. The second phase would include a 46,484-square-foot building also intended for commercial manufacturing.

The project would also include a parking lot with 173 spaces and off-site driveway access from an adjacent property to provide access to the rear of the property. Councilmember Michael Carroll recused himself from the discussion and vote due to a friendship with the applicant.

“This is a manufacturing facility,” Kim Cousins, president of the Lake Elsinore Valley Chamber of Commerce, said. “We’re not talking about heavy loads and, you know, Amazon trucks coming in and out, zipping and out. The traffic is at a much lower count, so I’m hopefully confident that you approve this project this evening.”

Cousins said he had been working with the project applicant for well over five years and was confident that the project would “produce an outstanding outcome.”

The other three who spoke at the meeting, including two residents of Lakeland Village, shared their concerns with the project, including environmental, safety and traffic impacts.

“We’re talking about the city taking the little pocket of city limits that lies within Lakeland Village,” Jim Savage, chair of the Lakeland Village Community Advisory Council, said. “All the traffic is going to be put through Lakeland Village, and we don’t get any say in this.”

However, Kelly Black, an attorney with Fennemore who spoke on behalf of the applicant, said that concerns were speculative and based on mischaracterizations of the project, which is estimated to bring in approximately $200,000 a year in sales tax revenue to the city.

“We have here a commercial manufacturing business that is relocating to the city of Lake Elsinore, a commercial manufacturing business that supplies building materials,” she said. “BuildersMax is not a chemical company, it doesn’t work with chemicals, it works with builders.”

Councilmember Steve Manos said he was concerned about the expected increase in truck traffic, but said that the increase would be less than if the property was used for high-density housing, the property’s original zoning designation.

“What we’re doing is we’re evaluating an application from somebody who has acquired the land that seeks to go ahead and build the project, and then we want to decide whether or not it’s a good fit for the area when there’s a zoning change involved,” he said. “This is something that we look at very closely, and in this particular instance, the number of car trips that would occur on this site would actually drop because of the change in zoning.”

The council members said they heard and understood the concerns of the residents of Lakeland Village, but at the end of the day supported the project. 

“We try to be good neighbors and make sure that, you know, we do the streets the right way and everything is done the right way. And so hopefully this project will present itself,” Mayor Brian Tisdale said. “But this is a project that’s also going to really benefit Lakeland Village because of its location.”