Despite an appeal by environmental groups, the city of Moreno Valley approved the construction of a 164,000-square-foot distribution warehouse.
LDC Industrial Realty, based in San Clemente, won approval to build the warehouse at the northeast corner of Alessandro Boulevard and Day Street, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reported.
The City Council voted 3-2 to move forward with the 8-acre project known as the Moreno Valley Business Center in the Edgemont neighborhood north of March Air Reserve Base.
“There’s a lot of trash in that area right now, there’s some trees and it’s very hilly, but I think a business center would bring the value of those homes up,” Mayor Pro Tem Ed Delgado said before the vote.
The decision follows a failed appeal by the Sierra Club and the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, which voiced concerns about health and environmental impacts to the community.
Last year, the California Air Resource Board told the city the warehouse would expose the community to elevated levels of air pollution from high daily volumes of heavy-duty diesel truck traffic and operation of on-site equipment.
Robert Krieger, chief of the board’s Risk Reduction Branch, said Edgement scored within the top 1 percent of the state’s most impacted air pollution sites, according to a letter to the city.
To combat environmental effects and traffic, a 10-foot wall will be placed around the building and truck access will be limited to Alessandro Boulevard, according to the project plan.
Councilman Ulises Cabrera, who voted against the project, said truck traffic is a big issue in the city and that there is “very little we can do” to keep trucks off certain streets such as Day Street near Edgemont Elementary School and off the 215 Freeway.
LDC Industrial promised to build streetlights and fire hydrants near the warehouse, a new storm drain to reduce flooding and a new water pump and back-up generator for the Box Springs Mutual Water Company.
A vote on another proposed warehouse, the nearly 1.3 million-square-foot Moreno Valley Trade Center on 80 acres south of the 60 Freeway, has been delayed, according to the Press-Enterprise. The project, proposed by Dallas-based Hillwood Investment Properties, would be nearly five stories tall.
— Dana Bartholomew
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