Warehouses in Menifee: where I stand

We have enough warehouses coming to Menifee. What we’re short on is space a local business can actually start in.

City and state records show millions of square feet of industrial projects in Menifee’s pipeline, at stages ranging from proposed to approved to under construction. Much of it entered the entitlement process before September 30, 2024, the cutoff the Legislature wrote into California’s warehouse law, and the approvals have kept coming, including a 1.26 million square foot distribution center in July 2026.

You may have heard that nine industrial projects were already in the pipeline ahead of the new law. They are not nine done deals, and they are not all the same. Some are under construction, several are approved but have not broken ground, at least one approval was set aside after a court challenge, and others face active lawsuits. The city’s remaining discretion is different for every one of them, and I will treat them that way. What the council cannot do is declare the new state standards applicable to a project the Legislature excluded.

Where the council’s authority is not in question is what comes next. My position:

• Favor the business-park model: smaller buildings, more opportunities for local employers, and first-lease space that gives the local entrepreneur a fighting chance.
• Change the rules for what comes next. Use the General Plan and zoning to steer future development toward light industry and small bays instead of more speculative warehouses, starting with the Northern Gateway.
• Put real teeth in the city’s Industrial Good Neighbor Policies. Today they are guidance a hearing body can waive. Make the buffer, setback, and truck-routing standards binding conditions of approval, and add operating-hour limits where industrial meets homes.
• Make industrial revenue work for residents: the fees and taxes it generates should fund roads, parks, and the services we actually want, with every dollar spent within the legal limits of the program that collected it.

I started my business at my kitchen table, and the hardest step was the first commercial lease. Build for the local entrepreneur, and some of Menifee’s commutes come home.