Mission Grove Residents Challenge March JPA's Revised Innovation Hub Plans

March Joint Power Authority presented six key changes to its plans for the March Innovation Hub project at a community meeting Tuesday, April 8, at the March Field Air Museum on Van Buren Boulevard.

These updates follow the project’s initial rollout in August 2022. Developer Randall Lewis said the revisions aim to foster innovation for students from nearby universities.

"We're also trying to think of how we can create cool pathways and different kinds of jobs for the high school students and local community students," Lewis said. "It's early in the process, we're trying to research developments like this all over the country to say what's appropriate for [the Inland Empire.]"

March JPA promises its new plan "is a reimagined mixed-use development that blends a dynamic range of industrial buildings with a modern business park, designed to nurture technology and education within the community." The project promises 3,100 new permanent jobs, construction of a new fire station, a 48-60 acre community park, and 578 acres of conservation land and open space.

The format of the event wasn't an ordinary town hall meeting set up. Small groups of 10 were dispersed into a rotation of individual presentations in charge of a specific area of the project.

Presentations were broken into: development of a new park, acres dedicated to open space, a decrease of building space and traffic, a new fire station and monetary contributions.

Carolyn Rasmussen, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, said the answers given by the presenters lacked substance and relied too much on their own narrative.

"I asked about the innovation hub and they were like well, we don't really have any details or information about that," Rasmussen said.

Rasmussen said she feels like the promises of innovation will fall into the cycle of temporary warehouse jobs that will push college educated individuals from the region to look for work elsewhere.

"It's hard to build a life based on a temporary job where you can be hired and fired at any moment," Rasmussen said. "It's really frustrating because our college educated students are going to look elsewhere for a job."

Jarrod Favors, a concerned homeowner, was among the several residents questioning each presenter.

"They're trying to sell us a park, sell us this fake revenue, because once they build it, they are gone," Favors said. "We got to deal with all these warehouses in our community. Nobody wanted to live around a bunch of buildings."

Similar concerns echoed throughout the night from different community members at different presentations. Anytime a question was asked by the attendees, project representatives highlighted their talking points instead of answering questions.

The March JPA will only be in charge of developing the project. None of the warehouses currently have a business attached to the project, a detail business owner Richard Gate felt was very telling.

"There's no, hey this company wants to move in, this is what they want to start up," Gate said. "It's very light on the details, which tells me they don't have it."

Community members were not fans of the structure of the meeting. Gate even called it 'odd' and compared it to North Korea, a totalitarian dictatorship.

"This was set up wrong," Favors said. "This wasn't set up to benefit [the community.]"

As plans continue to evolve, community members hope for more transparency from March JPA. The project, located near Alessandro Boulevard and Cactus Avenue, is being developed by Meridian Park West, LLC in partnership with the March Joint Powers Authority.