Residents fight to stave off industrial project
Many in 55-and-older community don’t want ‘loud, noisy, smelly’ activities next door
Residents of The Lakes at Hemet West who oppose a proposed industrial project nearby are, back row from left: Ed Hyde (red shirt), Charles Bridges, Darrell Grass, Roy Michael, Albert Silvas, Timmothy Klinesmith, JoAnna Graves, Larry Graves and Becki Grass. Second row from left: David Bon Wald (red hat), and wife Alex Bon Wald. Front row: Sam Forsythe.
A grassy, 63-acre lot on the west side of Hemet may be replaced with an industrial project.
The vacant lot’s neighbors include Hemet-Ryan Airport, businesses along West Florida and West Acacia avenues and The Lakes at Hemet West, a 55-and-older community, many of whose residents aren’t happy about the proposal.
“It’s just going to be loud, noisy, smelly, dangerous for people with breathing issues,” Hemet West resident Roy Michael, who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, said in August.
Michael also expressed concern about home values decreasing were the project to be built next door.
Hemet spokesperson Alan Reyes confirmed in August that the city had received an application for an industrial development at that location. City officials had not reviewed the proposal as of Oct. 3, according to a statement from Hemet Deputy City Clerk Brandon Yoshida.
The project would bring four industrial buildings and parking lots, the statement said.
One building would be a distribution center, it said, functioning “as an e-commerce fulfillment center and retail showroom with associated administrative offices,” while the other three buildings would be for business park industrial use.
Approximately 24 acres of the lot are zoned for general commercial use, and the other 39 for light manufacturing, according to a city document listing vacant land available for development.
Michael, 69, who has lived at Hemet West for
The Lakes at Hemet West resident Roy Michael, shown Aug. 29, has started a petition against an industrial development being proposed for a 63-acre lot east of the retirement community. The Lakes at Hemet West in Hemet has about 900residents.
Michael looks up property sales in Hemet over the past month as he waits to talk to residents in the clubhouse.
seven years in a house a few feet from the shared property line, started a petition against the development. As of Thursday, it had 281 signatures out of about 900 residents.
“Oh, yes. Yes, we are opposed to it,” Larry Graves, another Hemet West resident and president of its homeowners assocation, said Sept. 28.
Chaz Leon, a Hemet West resident who owns Car Cats, a used-car dealership across the street from the lot, feels differently.
“This is the way of progress,” he said, adding that development in Hemet will happen whether residents want it or not, though he isn’t an advocate for the proposal.
Leon compared the
changes in and around Hemet to those in Downey, to which his family moved in the 1950s. There used to be dairy farms, open spaces and mobile home parks, he said, but that’s no longer the case.
“It’s gonna be all cement, from here to Idyllwild,” he said of Hemet.
The Green Coalition of the San Jacinto Valley also has a petition opposing the development and plans to present it to Hemet’s Planning Commission and City Council.
Shaul Rosen-Rager, who leads the coalition’s climate group, said Oct. 2 that the petition had about 60 signatures.
The buildings proposed would total 1.2 million square feet, Rosen-Rager said, or approximately half the area of the lot.
“And we’ve been hearing about these warehouses that are causing problems
all over the IE,” he said, as well as the associated health problems from air pollution. “We just don’t think that Hemet needs to be cursed by one of these developments.”
The number of warehouses in the Inland Empire has soared in recent years, spurred by the rise in e-commerce during the coronavirus pandemic. As available land in western Riverside County has grown scarcer, the logistics industry has taken warehouse development proposals eastward, to cities including Banning, Beaumont and Moreno Valley, future home of the World Logistics Center.
Hemet, which lies a few miles south of those cities, has 27 warehouses on 139
acres, according to the Warehouse CITY map developed by Pitzer College’s Redford Conservancy and Radical Research LLC.
Last year, the Hemet lot was purchased by the 212 Markham LLC, according to documents Michael obtained from third-party property record databases.
The LLC handles “warehouse logistics,” according to a form filed with the California secretary of state in 2020. The Livermore address given for the LLC on the forms matches that of the U.S. headquarters for Loctek Ergonomic, a Chinese manufacturing company, and the corporate headquarters for FlexiSpot, a company connected to Loctek. Loctek and FlexiSpot sell office furniture andrelatedproducts,manyof which are listed on Amazon.
Loctek and Flexispot representatives could not be reached for comment.
Hemet Mayor Joe Males said Oct. 2 that residents have voiced their opposition to the project to the city.
Hemet officials had a “community discussion” with residents in September, Males said, and that their concerns will be considered.
He also said that the surrounding roads, possibly Acacia Avenue, may have to be widened to accommodate additional traffic.
“Nothing’s passed yet,” Males said. “There’s a lot of things before this even gets approved that have to be discussed.”
Project foes continue waiting for that discussion to move forward.
“You don’t put a warehouse next to a nice quiet neighborhood,” Michael said.
“There’s 100 places in Riverside County where they can put this warehouse where no one could care.”
In September, this newspaper submitted a California Public Records Act request for recent records about the property, including the development proposal.
After missing its deadline to respond, city officials requested a 10-day extension, and responded Oct. 3. In the response, Yoshida wrote that, after reviewing the relevant records, officials determined that the city is exempt from disclosing “any preliminary drafts, notes, or interagency or interagency memoranda that are not retained by a public agency in the ordinary course of business.”
Yoshida wrote that additional questions could be directed to the city’s Community Development Department.
Community Development Director Monique AlanizFlejter did not respond to an Oct. 2 email or a Wednesday voicemail.