Highland OKs shops and more housing

200 residences part of ‘Golden Triangle’ project

Development in the longstalled “Golden Triangle” area of Highland is picking up steam as another 200 housing units and almost 40 acres of commercial space will start moving forward.

The City Council’s June 8 approval of development north of Greenspot Road follows its September 2020 OK for 200 townhomes just to the east.

“It has been a long journey getting up to this point,” Lawrence Mainez, the Community Development Department’s director, told the council at the meeting.

Fifteen years ago, developers envisioned the area along Greenspot east of the 210 Freeway as a bustling city center. Plans called for 800 housing units, the city’s first movie theater and 75 acres or so of commercial and mixed-use space, but much of the land stayed vacant.

Complications included endangered San Bernardino kangaroo rats found in the area. A mitigation agreement was approved in 2020.

The development that gained approval this month calls for 39.7 acres of commercial area and 33.7 acres of housing including 164 apartments in three-story buildings, and 36 townhomes.

Developer TREH Partners requested 3.9 more acres for housing than in original plans, with the amount of commercial land reduced by that much to adjust for demand.

Retail is not in demand as much as housing, but it’s not going away either, TREH’s Tom Robinson told the council.

“It might not be the exact same retail that we have today, because of Amazon,” he added.

With 200 townhomes going in just to the east and the 316-house Mediterra project going in about 4 miles east of the project, Robinson said he had gotten traction with retail tenants he couldn’t before “when nothing has happened for so many years.”

The only tenant he would confirm was Starbucks.

The developer also asked to opt out of Highland Planning Commission conditions requiring a payment of $550,000 in fire fees triggered by the apartment buildings’ heights.

To fight fires in buildings over two stories, the city currently contracts with the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians for a ladder truck’s service.

If the tribe decided not to extend the contract, the city would have to buy a ladder truck of its own and staff it. TREH’s fire fee would help the city pay for the staffing.

It is “highly unlikely” the tribe will terminate the contract, Mainez told the council.

Robinson said the added cost “devastates the project.”

He said the developer’s top concern is safety for firefighters and residents.

The truck “is probably already needed in the city,” Robinson added. “We feel all the city should be paying for it.”

Councilman John Timmer worried that if the agreement with the tribe ever went away, the council would have to cut services to pay for the truck and staffing.

“If the San Manuel contract is ever terminated, we as the council, whomever that may be, are going to have to make some really tough decisions on where the money is going to come from to buy a fire truck, personnel involved,” he added.

Highland’s budget, which was also approved June 8, has a razor-thin margin due at least in part to Fire Department revenues no longer covering expenses.

The council approved the Gold Triangle project without the fire fees 4-0, with Councilman Jesse Chavez absent.

Construction on both the housing and retail portions could start in 2022.