Year in Review: 2016

Voter-approved sales and occupancy taxes, the loss of a minor league baseball team and the return of Santa’s Village were among the major business stories in the Inland Empire during 2016.

The Inland Empire made some serious business news in 2016.

Several Inland Empire cities voted to raise taxes in order to improve their communities’ standard of living, a minor league baseball team folded and the longtime head of the region’s largest private employer passed away.

Two thousand and sixteen was also the year that California State University teachers – including instructors at Cal State San Bernardino – almost went on strike, Santa’s Village reopened near Lake Arrowhead and Los Angeles officially handed control of Ontario International Airport to local authorities, ending a sometimes nasty legal battle between the two municipalities.

On November 8, voters in several Inland Empire cities – including Hemet, Moreno Valley and Riverside – agreed to tax hikes – either a sales tax or hotel occupancy tax – to raise revenue for extra police and fire protection or other community upgrades.

Voters in Colton bucked that trend. They turned down Measure T, a 2.5 percent increase of the city’s hotel occupancy tax that would have paid for improvements to the city’s athletic and recreational fields.

While those cities were trying to raise extra revenue for much-needed public services, the High Desert was losing its professional baseball team.

The High Desert Mavericks in Adelanto, a Single-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers, ceased operation after the season ended in September, the result of a dispute regarding the ball club’s lease at the city-owned Heritage Field at State Bros. Stadium.

The Mavericks lease agreement, which began in 2012, required the team to pay the city $1 a year for use of the stadium. That agreement, which was negotiated by a previous city council, was declared unacceptable by the current council, which asked for a renegotiation.

Adelanto officials also maintained that the Mavericks owed the city $2 million for upkeep at Stater Bros. Stadium, and that the ball club unfairly limited the number of non-baseball events, like concert and football games, that were held there.

Unable to resolve the dispute, the Mavericks were disbanded at the end of the season, ending their 25-year reign in the High Desert.  However, the region won’t be without professional baseball: the independent High Desert Yardbirds of the Pecos League of Professional Baseball Clubs in Houston announced recently it will begin playing next May at Stater Bros. Stadium.

2016 was a bittersweet year for Stater Bros., the San Bernardino-based supermarket chain. On the positive side, it celebrated its 80th anniversary and made its first move into Ventura County, opening a store in Simi Valley in August.

But Jack Brown, the company’s executive chairman, passed away in November. Brown, who joined Stater Bros. in 1981, was a driving force behind making the company the largest privately owned supermarket chain in Southern California.

On Dec. 12, Phillip J. Smith, the company’s vice chairman, was named chairman of the board of Stater Bros. Markets, the supermarket chain’s parent company.

In April, teachers in the California State University system, including approximately 600 instructors at Cal State San Bernardino, narrowly avoided a strike in April.

Only days before a five-day walkout was scheduled to start on all 23 Cal State campuses, the California Faculty Association accepted a contract that gave professors, instructors and other union members a 10.5 percent pay increase during the next three years.

The settlement, which avoided what would have been the largest strike in the history of U.S. higher education, also raises the vesting period for retiree benefits from five years to 10 years for employees hired after July 1, 2017.

Both sides were deadlocked for nearly a year. Cal State offered a two percent increase, while the faculty association and its estimated 26,000 members refused to settle for anything less than a five percent pay hike.

With Christmas just three weeks away, Santa’s Village, the iconic destination in the San Bernardino Mountains that disappeared nearly 20 years ago, reopened.

Now known as Skypark at Santa’s Village, the park was brought back to life by Bill Johnson, a local developer, and his wife Michelle. The original Santa’s Village opened in 1955 and had a successful run for several decades before falling into bankruptcy in the 1970s. From there it struggled to stay in business before it closed in 1998.

In September, ITT Technical Institute announced it was closing all of its schools nationwide, including its campuses in Corona and San Bernardino.

The closures, which were effective immediately, affected more than 35,000 students and an estimated 8,000 employees, according to the for-profit operation.

The move was caused by the U.S. Department of Education’s decision to forbid the school from accepting new students who use federal financial aid.  ITT Educational pledged to help its former students get into other technical schools.

JCPenney, one of the country’s largest and oldest department store chains, opened a two-level store at Inland Center Mall in October, creating approximately 150 jobs in the process.

The 119,000-square-foot store is in the space formerly occupied by Gottschalks, which has been vacant since that chain filed for bankruptcy and shut down seven years ago.

The venerable department store chain, which opened in time for the mall’s 50th anniversary celebration, is Inland Center’s fourth anchor tenant, along with Forever 21, Macy’s and Sears.

In May, groundbreaking ceremonies were held on what will be a state-of-the-art medical facility at Loma Linda University Health.

The project, which is expected to be completed in 2020 will consist of two towers, a new adult hospital and an expanded children’s hospital. The $360 million facility will be named after Dennis and Carol Troesh, the couple that donated $100 million toward its completion.

In November, Ontario officially took control of Ontario International Airport from Los Angeles.

The agreement, which both cities reached in 2015, will give Ontario full control of the airport, allowing it to move forward with plans to upgrade the facility and increase its passenger traffic, according to city officials.

The shift in ownership happened in part because of a major drop in traffic that began in 2007. Los Angeles World Airports, the agency that formerly owned and operated the airport, blamed the decline on the recession, but Ontario officials said LAWA was putting most of its time and resources into its other major property, Los Angeles International Airport.