More than a hundred residents of Perris, Moreno Valley and surrounding areas showed up to last week’s scheduled 46th District Agricultural Association/Southern California Fair board meeting in opposition to a recently approved non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Global Stack LLC.
Stay up to date with the latest from The Record. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter today!
“Global Stack does not have the financial stability nor does it have the most reputable source as a company that can actually sustain and provide all the infrastructure that they’re promising,” said J.C. Franco, a Perris resident and city council candidate. “We don’t want empty promises in Perris.”
Due to the number of people who attended, Board President Marisa Yeager made the decision to hear their comments before adjourning the scheduled meeting for lack of a quorum. The board, which is supposed to have nine members appointed by the governor, currently has seven, which Yeager said can make it difficult to achieve quorum.
“Even without a quorum, we made a commitment to be here to listen to you, because, like you, our time is precious,” she said. “Every one of your comments is recorded. Every one of your comments will be part of the discussions in public at a future meeting as well.”
Last week’s scheduled meeting was the first following the board’s August 26 decision to approve an MOU with Global Stack. The board had previously discussed the proposal at its May and July meetings.
“When this opportunity came up, we met with the organizers of Global Stack, and I gave them a site tour of the grounds, and they presented their brochure, their their concept of what this would look like,” Russell Vandenberg, SoCal Fair and Events Center CEO, said in an interview with The Record. “Without identifying any specific location, they felt that the Perris Fairgrounds was a good fit, and they asked if we would consider an MOU to perform additional research [and] discovery, and, if it all worked out, then they would present the board with a project proposal that could be discussed, reviewed and then potentially approved or denied at the board level.”
According to the MOU, obtained by The Riverside Record through a California Public Records Act request, Global Stack is considering the potential lease of up to five acres of fairground property for the “development of infrastructure designed to address and support emergency services,” with an agreement term of up to 100 years.
As part of any future agreement, Global Stack would, at its own cost, design, construct and maintain a multi-level parking structure ensuring no loss of parking capacity for the fairgrounds due to the proposed development and providing the fairgrounds with additional revenue.
“A parking structure is a very expensive undertaking and something that we would never be able to fund ourselves, so the proposal said, ‘If you give us a 100-year lease and five acres of your land, we’ll build a parking structure that will be yours. We’ll build it, it won’t cost you anything, and you’ll keep all the revenue from it,” Vandenberg said. “So the interest level basically was that this could be an opportunity for the fairgrounds, and we, as a board, decided to sign the MOU, which is non-binding and even has a 30-day cancellation clause built into it.”
Vandenberg said the proposal was presented to the organization about five months ago and, along with a parking structure, included a helipad and a data center about the size of a storage container that would “fuel the technology needed” for both daily and emergency operations. For many of those who spoke at last week’s meeting, the proposed data center was the sticking point.
“I urge the board of directors to push back on data center proposals being built. It is out of step with the community’s needs,” said Shirley Martinez, a Perris resident. “The fairgrounds are meant for public gatherings, ot for private corporations like Global Stack.”
In an email to The Record, Global Stack said the data center, which it referred to as an edge computer system, would be designed to process information locally and would utilize self-contained, closed-loop cooling technologies that “require no municipal water connection and consume power comparable to other commercial or municipal facilities.”
The company, on its website, said daily activity could include what it calls advanced air mobility, intelligent transportation, local communications and local economic activity. In an emergency, the infrastructure could support response, coordination and recovery including evacuation, first responder deployment, emergency communications and situational awareness and command.
“By bringing together public assets and private investment, we are proposing a new model designed to strengthen that infrastructure while creating sustainable revenue to support fairgrounds for the long term,” Dan Kang, Global Stack CEO said in a statement to The Record. “As proposals are evaluated, we’re committed to working with fairgrounds, elected officials and communities to ensure any path forward reflects local needs and California’s broader resilience priorities.”
Questions sent to Global Stack regarding specific details about how the data center would be used to support the work being done at the fairgrounds and how the company planned to make money from these partnerships went unanswered.
The company also declined to respond to questions about the nature of the work Ellesse Flores, who responded to The Record’s emails, does for the company.
Flores is the daughter of Deputy Secretary of Fairs and Expositions at the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Michael Flores, as first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, who earlier this year told a gathering of fairground CEOs that the company would be in contact with them.
“It was basically noted that it is a legitimate company, and that it was up to us individually whether we wanted to pursue an MOU,” Vandenberg said. “We were not told we had to do that. We were not encouraged. It was just ‘You’re going to be contacted by Global Stack and…if you wish to engage with them, it’s up to the individual fairgrounds.’”
It was not immediately clear if Ellesse Flores was associated with Global Stack at the time of that meeting, and Vandenberg said her name was not mentioned.
He also said she was not part of the initial site tour, but did attend at least one subsequent meeting via Zoom. He said he had never met her, nor was it disclosed during that meeting that she is Michael Flores’ daughter.
The CDFA did not immediately respond to questions from The Record about whether the undisclosed relationship might constitute a conflict of interest.
Back in Perris, Vandenberg said discussions were at the very early stages and that he didn’t expect for Global Stack to finish its evaluation process of the site for at least six months.
“There’s no timeline in place,” he said. “It’s just whenever they conduct their due diligence.”
The Lake Perris Fairgrounds, owned by the state, sit just outside the city limits of Perris, which earlier this year moved forward with a plan to ban data centers. The city, in a statement to The Record said it has no jurisdiction over development at the fairgrounds, but did not comment on the Global Stack proposal.
Vandenberg said the council’s action was brought up at the August 26 meeting and would be taken into consideration as discussions continued, even though it would not apply to the fairgrounds.
Yeager, at last week’s meeting, said she wished the board was able to take action, but told those in the audience that the MOU would be on future agendas for discussion.
The Riverside Record is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet providing Riverside County with high-quality journalism free of charge. We’re able to do this because of the generous donations of supporters like you!