The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Council may temporarily bar new warehouses
Moratorium could take effect immediately as early as Wednesday
There soon could be a halt in the approval of warehouses and industrial buildings in rural Horsetown, USA — for now.
Norco City Council members said last week that a moratorium in the city — which would temporarily stop the building of new industrial buildings, including warehouses and logistic centers — is warranted.
A 45-day moratorium would give officials time to find potential impacts of warehousing on public safety, health and welfare, according to a city report. It needs a four-fifths council vote to pass.
The city has about 50 completed “industrial-type” buildings, including warehouses, city spokesperson Kelli Newton said.
Establishing a moratorium would give officials more time to study the impacts of warehousing in Norco.
The move is meant for “the purpose of developing proper zoning, regulations and standards” for future logistic sites, the report states. It prohibits any use that conflicts with Norco’s general plan, specific plan or zoning proposal being considered.
“The safety, health and welfare of our community, when we look at things especially if they are not clearly defined, (can) impact to the air quality, traffic and safety of our residents,” Mayor Pro Tem Robin Grundmeyer said at the Aug. 3 council meeting.
An ordinance will be discussed at the Aug.17 Norco City Council meeting. If approved then, a moratorium would take effect immediately.
Similar moratoriums temporarily barring industrial projects have been passed in Pomona, Chino, Jurupa Valley and Riverside.
Norco’s moratorium would last 45 days unless extended by the city council. It can be extended for 10 months and 15 days, and then again for a year. The council also could do one extension of 22 months and 15 days.
This comes after Norco — a city that prides itself on rural, equestrian living — approved a 2-million square foot, ranch-themed warehouse earlier this year.
Palomino Business Park, now in its first building phase, will be the biggest industrial warehouse in city history. That warehouse will be in an area
below Second Street, from Pacific Avenue on the west to Mountain avenue on the east, that would be exempt from the moratorium.
One street the moratorium includes is Horseless Carriage Drive, east of the 15 Freeway, and the area within Norco’s 30-year-old Gateway Specific Plan, both of which are partially zoned for industrial and warehouse use.
“The city has the ability to stop proposed new industrial buildings pending further study through the adoption of the temporary moratorium,” Planning Director Alma Robles said at the meeting. “It would basically prohibit any new applications to be turned in.”
Only applications currently in the city’s review process will be considered for approval.
At Wednesday’s meeting, council members expressed concerns that Norco could become too dense with industrial buildings and zones.
Mayor Greg Newton said he wanted to further define “warehousing distribution centers” and “industrial buildings,” and may support limiting the size of each.
“One of the reasons I’m supporting this is that we need to be able to define (both),” Greg Newton said. “Industrial buildings are where we have retail sales, manufacturing, a lot of those buildings and businesses are locally-owned. There certainly is a demand for that, even if we don’t quite have all the space.”
Grundmeyer said a moratorium is “warranted” and that the city needs to clearly define the uses of warehouses versus industrial centers.
Council Member Kevin Bash said he is concerned about the number of warehouses and logistic centers in and surrounding Norco, and cited their effect on California’s water and power crisis.
“Right now the public perception is that we have these things growing everywhere in Norco, so the cessation of them, I think, is very important,” Bash said. “I’d like to see the impacts of what we’re building — this is an impressive number of square footage — and I’d like to see what those impacts are … we forget, we really are a patch of green surrounded by an ever-growing sea of concrete.”