The March Joint Powers Authority (MJPA) Monday unanimously voted to reject the controversial West Campus Upper Plateau project, recently rebranded as the March Innovation Hub.
“I felt strongly that the people should be heard,” Commissioner Jose Medina said of his decision to make the motion in an interview with The Riverside Record following the meeting. “I think they made very strong arguments against the project.”
Medina said that he had a lot of questions of the project following the presentation by both MJPA staff and the developers beyond the scope of what he brought up during the commission’s deliberation following the public hearing, which included concerns about the ever-changing details of the proposal.
“When I served 10 years in the legislature, I said that these decisions are best made locally,” he said before making a motion to reject the project. “But now, this is the first time that I find myself holding local office, and I agree with the opponents of this project.”
The vote on that motion, seconded by Commissioner Marisela Nava, came a little more than four hours after the meeting started, with dozens still sitting in the overflow space watching on big screens in the lobby of the County Administrative Center.
“I was very nervous coming in here tonight, and the developer definitely put in a lot of hard work to try to get this passed,” Jen Larratt-Smith, chair of Riverside Neighbors Opposing Warehouses (R-NOW), said immediately following the vote in an interview with The Record. “You know how after they win the Super Bowl, and they’re like, ‘How are you feeling,’ and they’re all like, ‘Ahhhh!’ That’s how I feel a little bit. It just doesn’t feel real.”
During their presentation, the developers laid out all the ways in which the updated proposal differed from the initial proposal that the commission tabled last summer. Those differences included a decrease of more than a million square feet in total development — almost entirely from the business park and mixed use areas of the development instead of the industrial area — and an increase of roughly 2.4 million square feet in park/recreation and open space.
“We took what was suggested by R-NOW, and actually about 4% less square footage was reduced from that particular plan,” Brian Goodman, representing Meridian Park West, said. “The results of that being some of the things that we heard: enhancing land use compatibility, reducing traffic, reducing emissions.”
And at Monday night’s meeting, Goodman said the speculative warehouse part of the project was being removed from the plot plan and would need to be approved at a later date before construction could begin.
“We know that’s a significant issue,” he said. “We’re here to put that off to the side and say, ‘Let’s not focus on that right now.’”
MJPA CEO Grace Martin clarified that, according to current county policies, that approval could come without the project ever going to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, which was a sticking point for a number of the commissioners.
“As it’s written, the specific plan does have industrial warehousing as an allowed use within the industrial zone, and it’s permitted, so based on the county’s process, it’s not guaranteed that it would come to the County Board of Supervisors,” Martin said. “It may go through a director’s hearing or your planning commission.”
Another sticking point for many of the commissioners were the purported economic and community benefits presented as part of the project, which included thousands of construction jobs, 3,100 permanent jobs, $16 million in fees and property taxes for the local cities, $43 million in fees and property taxes for the county, $30 million in park development, $11 million for a new fire station and $20 million for road and infrastructure improvements.
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“I just don’t care for when an applicant stands up before us and tells us how many jobs it’s going to create when you’re building on spec,” Commissioner Michael Vargas said. “I don’t care what history-based data [you have], you don’t know who’s going in there, so I don’t appreciate when you say 3,100 jobs. That’s a lot of jobs.”
The commissioners also had a number of questions about the newly included March Innovation Hub, which as of Monday night’s meeting had no known confirmed community partners in the education, technology or economic development space.
“When it comes to the Innovation Hub, it’s a great idea,” Commissioner Jim Perry said. “I think the problem in the conversation this evening has been as we’ve heard second-hand about entities and organizations and institutions who would support this idea, it’s just that there’s no backup to it.”
And while commissioners Yxstian Gutierrez, Ed Delgado, Ulises Cabrera and Chuck Conder were generally in support of the revamped proposed development, and efforted to get it approved through an alternate motion that would not only require it to go back before the supervisors before construction on the center portion of the project could begin, but also prohibit storage and distribution uses.
However, the alternate motion failed on a tie vote, pushing the commissioners back to Medina’s original motion to reject the project “in totality.”
“It’s a temporary victory, but it’s great for today,” Mike McCarthy, vice chair of R-NOW, said in an interview with The Record. “It’s democracy in action, and I’d like to thank our commissioners.”
In an email to The Record, Randall Lewis, senior executive vice president of marketing for the Lewis Group of Companies, called the vote a “massive opportunity that has been lost.”
“It shifts more than $100 million in legal and financial obligations to county taxpayers; it delays by at least five years our efforts to create a knowledge-based economy for our region; and it leaves the Joint Powers Authority and the County (as the successor agency) without a clear path forward to fulfill their obligations to develop the property, which is required per the conditions of conveyance, when the property was accepted from the United States Air Force,” he wrote.
It was not immediately clear what happens now that the proposal has been rejected, though with the MJPA scheduled to sunset this summer, that question will likely fall to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors.
As for R-NOW, which has spent the last three years opposing this project, Larratt-Smith said the organization recently received a $250,000 grant to support others in economically and environmentally disadvantaged areas.
“We basically are funneling money to them so they can win their fights too,” she said. “That’s what we’re doing next.”
Following the meeting, Medina and Nava shared a brief moment of celebration in the hallway behind the board room.
“Great job, Medina,” she said. “You made magic happen.”
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