Opponents of World Logistics Center have some work to do

The mega-industrial project in Moreno Valley finally gets to the planning commission and it’s clear the project has strong support. Even the city’s planning staff believes it’s a good idea.

Large industrial projects that have the potential to disrupt a community usually engender opposition, not support, from the public.

Residents who live near the proposed site raise a fuss about noise, traffic and pollution that will be created by the development, and maybe threaten legal action if the project isn’t reduced or done away with entirely.

So far, that’s not the case with the World Logistics Center, the proposed warehouse-distribution operation in Moreno Valley that would cover 40.6 million square feet at build out on the city’s east side.

When the project was reviewed Thursday by the planning commission, a clear majority of the estimated 500 people in attendance were there to lend their support.

They cheered loudly when anyone from the city’s planning staff said anything positive about the project, held up banners and waved placards that referred to the estimated 20,000 jobs World Logistics will create during the 20 to 30 years it will take to build.

They even gave Iddo Benzeevi, president and chief executive officer of Highland Fairview in Moreno Valley, the project’s developer, a standing ovation. Benzeevi spent more the one hour describing the virtues of an industrial development large enough to cover 700 football fields.

Benzeevi, a specialist in large industrial projects, developed the 1.8 million-square-foot Skechers facility in Moreno Valley. He told the commission it will do long-term damage to the city if it doesn’t set aside land for industrial development, a sector that will produce more and more jobs in the future.

If the city doesn’t want the jobs that World Logistics and other industrial projects will bring to it, then those jobs will go somewhere else, probably within the Inland Empire, Benzeevi said.

“This is a major opportunity for the city,” Benzeevi told the seven-member commission during his power-point presentation. “It will help the economy and it will help bring about a better way of life, if not for this generation, for our children.”

Most supporters of World Logistics took up the middle of the room, the Grand Ballroom of the Moreno Valley Conference & Recreation Center. The meeting, which was the first public hearing involving World Logistics, was moved from city hall to accommodate the large crowd.

Most of the project’s opponents sat off to one side, distinguished by their red and yellow buttons with the letters “WLC” crossed out. A few wore white t-shirts that read “Moreno Valley Is Not For Sale,” perhaps a reference to Benzeevi’s frequent contributions to local political candidates.

But the opponents of World Logistics were in the minority Thursday, as one of their number admitted.

“Oh, we know we’re badly outnumbered,” said Kathleen Dale, a Moreno Valley resident for most of her life. “It’s been that way from the start. It’s something we have to fight our way through.”

Dale called Thursday’s session “a microcosm of everything that’s wrong with planning in Moreno Valley,” from not enough advanced notice regarding the meeting to incomplete and inaccurate staff reports.

Moreno Valley should turn down World Logistics Center because the city already has enough industrial development, Dale said.

“I’ve done research, and there’s about 55 million square feet of industrial space in Moreno Valley, Riverside, Perris and [the former] March Air Force Base,” Dale said. “I think that’s more than enough. The city needs to diversify its job base, not keep relying so much on logistics.

Tom Thornsley, an 18-year Moreno Valley resident, agreed.

“We’re surrounded on all sides by industrial development,” said Thornsley, who said he has worked in several city planning departments in the Inland Empire. “How much more of it do we need?”

Supporters of the project say its benefits far outweigh any negatives.

Debra Craig, a Moreno Valley resident for 25 years, at first opposed World Logistics but changed her mind immediately after hearing Benzeevi describe it in detail.

Now, she believes the project’s critics are exaggerating its downside, just as some residents did with the Skechers project while it was being planned.

“I met Iddo by chance, and we talked a little bit about the project,” Craig said. “Then he asked me to come to [Highland Fairview] so he could give me a personal demonstration, which I did, and I was blown away. I decided that Moreno Valley needs this, that it needs the jobs it will create.”

Evan Morgan, a Moreno Valley resident since 1993, started a Facebook page in support of World Logistics, but said he doesn’t believe the project’s supporters need to do more organizing than that.

“Some things are so good you don’t need to organize or think about it very much,” Morgan said. “It’s like the Apple watch. You don’t think about what to do. You just go out and buy it.”

Opponents of World Logistics are up against more than some fellow residents who don’t agree with them. The city’s planning staff has recommended that World Logistics be approved, citing in its staff report the sales tax it will generate, jobs it will create – both construction and permanent – and how it will help reduce the city’s jobs-housing imbalance.

Dale acknowledged that the project’s opponents haven’t really organized themselves since the project was first proposed, but admitted she doesn’t know how much it might help their cause.

“In this city, I don’t know how much it would help,” she said.