Between Progress and Preservation: A Visual Narrative of the Impact of Warehouse Development in the Inland Empire

Aryana Noroozi | Map by Alex Reed

Dubbed the “land of the cheap dirt,” in comparison to the cost of land in neighboring coastal regions of Southern California, the inland region begins approximately sixty miles east of Los Angeles. Historically, homebuyers and real estate developers have taken advantage of the area’s lower cost of living and land. But those who settled here could not have predicted the impact of e-commerce, from its onset to its global boom, and the degree to which it would affect them.

Beginning in the 2000’s and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, the demand for online shopping, and consequently for goods — stored and distributed in warehouses — has grown exponentially. 

At the same time, more homes were built and families from the Los Angeles metropolitan area and other parts of the country continued to buy in the region, looking for a lower cost of living and refuge from urban life. 

These dueling demands for land use collide today, as warehouses sit directly next to homes and schools. In some communities, such as Bloomington, homes are bought from residents and sold to warehouse developers through real estate brokers.

Over the past decade, communities like Rialto and Fontana have witnessed the transformation of their open land to industrial business parks. Hundreds of cement acres form  grids of distribution centers that are at the heart of a system that modern day Americans know too well. Shipping containers arrive on trucks carrying online orders that are packaged inside warehouses and then redistributed onto more trucks, making their way to customer doorsteps across the nation. Currently, the region is transited by approximately five hundred thousand trucks with two or more axles per day.

Bloomington initially witnessed this change occurring in neighboring communities, but now, they too face the reality of proliferating warehouse developments. Bloomington is emblematic of the entire region’s discourse around warehousing. Some community members are fighting relentlessly to protect schools, parks and homes while others feel that development is the only way to progress. 

Bloomington exemplifies how a community can fall along a spectrum when it comes to taking a stance on the issue of warehouse development. Here, some residents find no room for discussion with developers. Instead, they fight to preserve their community’s Mexican ranch culture, an important piece of its land and identity. Others believe compromise is crucial and that warehouse development will happen either way. Discussions about the future of Bloomington have made their way across the region, from environmental activist groups, city and county elected officials, planning commissioners and those invested in trucking and construction industries, including independent truckers.

When it comes to development, a look at Bloomington brings the idea of what’s at stake front and center. The narratives of the community, its land, and history beg  questions of what is to be lost and gained as warehousing continues to expand.

A Bloomington resident wears a traditional Mexican dress as she rides her horse at the David Jayne Equestrian Arena where residents finished a march protesting the development of the Bloomington Business Park Specific Plan on September 18, 2022. Warehouse developments have continued to vastly expand across the Inland Empire region and in Bloomington where the community’s unique lifestyle of Mexican ranch culture faces an ongoing threat from these developments as they encroach on the undeveloped plots of land. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

Beverly Knippel looks out her bedroom window as she packs to move with her husband John from Bloomington, California to Yulee, Florida, August 26, 2023.  According to Earthjustice, 117 homeowners in Bloomington sold their homes to warehouse developers to be demolished for the construction of the Bloomington Business Park, a 2.1 million square foot warehouse planned in Bloomington. Real estate brokers negotiated deals between residents like the Knippels and Howard Industrial Partners, the developer of the project. The Knippels’ home was demolished in late September 2023. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

Beverly and John Knippel pose for a portrait in their Bloomington home, August 26, 2023. The couple met in the Inland Empire in the late 1970’s. John was teaching driver’s education at Bloomington High School and led the mock trial, debate and wrestling programs there for 19 years. Beverly taught history at Fontana Middle School for 32 years. In 1980, the Knippels bought a plot of Bloomington land and built their home. John worked on the home alongside the builders. 

They remember when their street was a dirt road and the mailman had to drive his truck across front yards since no road was paved. Initially, when they received an offer from a real estate broker in 2016, the thought of selling their home for demolition was inconceivable. Eventually, however, the Knippels accepted an offer for what they believe to be around three times what their home is worth. 

“Most of the houses on that street are custom built by the people living in them. Their goal when they built them, just like ours, [was] this is what we wanted. We built it, we’re here. So to take that original dream, and say, okay, and we’re gonna go someplace else. That’s hard,” said John.

“We’ve been there 43 years and during those 43 years, the community of Bloomington tried to become a little city many, many times. Every time they tried, they were told they didn’t have a tax base to support a government,” John said. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

Beverly and John Knippel sit by the pool at their Bloomington home with their dogs, February 8, 2023. “Virtually everybody involved in this [selling their homes] was planning on being there until they died. So a lot of us had to make a pretty heavy decision. And then we had to face everybody else who would then come up in all these [community] meetings, saying that we were traitors,” John said. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

Left: At dusk, clouds settle over Rose Avenue, the street where the Knipples lived for 43 years, March 1, 2023.

Right: Rose Avenue stands empty after all of the homes that once stood, including the Knipples’, were demolished in September 2023 to begin the construction of the Bloomington Business Park Specific Plan, January 23, 2024. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

An Amazon warehouse, Amazon IXD – SBD1, looms behind the homes on Cricket Drive, a suburban neighborhood in Bloomington, January 24, 2024. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

Left image: Carolina Verduzco (right) and her daughters Saori Castillo, 10, (left) and Sophia Castillo, 15, (center) pose for a portrait at the David Jayne Equestrian Arena after a march in protest of the Bloomington Business Park, September 18, 2022. Verduzco says that she is not against the logistics industry but rather the reckless way that it came into her community and is an outlier in her beliefs about sitting down with developers to discuss meeting the needs of the community.

Right image: As a local business owner running a barber shop that has been within her family for 35 years, Verduzco has belonged to a movement to incorporate Bloomington for over 20 years. She joined her community in the fight against the Bloomington Business Park, even though she anticipated the project would be approved. “Until we accept that this is what it is, we can’t move past that. We need to have those honest conversations and if we don’t… we’re not going to be able to rescue a lot of things that are still valuable to us.” (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

“If we don’t build a relationship with a lot of these developers, they don’t have to negotiate because they know after so many legal battles, it’s going to happen,” said Verduzco. “The people that are being offered a million dollars or 700 [thousand dollars] for their homes, I’m not mad at them for selling their property because they have been neglected for such a long time by the county. I mean, we have no sidewalks…there’s no streetlights,” she said. “Maybe they’re going to move somewhere where they actually have services and have something as basic as a sidewalk and a connection to the sewer.”

Without incorporation, Bloomington lacks certain infrastructure and resources that has led to homes flooding and the community’s usage of septic tanks for  sewage. Fed up with these conditions, some residents look to warehouse developers to bring solutions. Some organizers, like Verduzco, think this led them to become a warehouse hotspot today.

Members of the rapidly growing construction workers union, Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) show their support for the Bloomington Business Park Specific Plan at the San Bernardino County Planning Commission meeting, September 22, 2022. 

Supporters as well as opponents of the Bloomington Business Plan made their voices heard during the heated meeting.

“Some say a project like this is only a temporary job that leaves behind low paying jobs with no real opportunities. But that’s just not true,” said Jason Vallez, a member of the Laborers’ International Union of North America during public comments. “This is how we [construction workers] keep food on the table and pay the bills,” he added

At the end of the meeting, the Planning Commision voted to move the project ahead to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, which unanimously approved the project in November 2022. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

Tim Howard, a partner at Howard Industrial Partners, the developer of the Bloomington Business Park Specific Plan, poses for a portrait in his office in Orange, California, March 3, 2023.  Howard is an eighth-generation Southern Californian, whose family migrated from Mexico to New Mexico and then to present-day Colton. He has been a developer in the Inland Empire region for the past decade. 

“I think the county would like to be done with Bloomington and get it standing on its own two feet…What has happened in the past is Rialto expands, Fontana expands, Colton expands,” said Howard, referring to incorporated cities in the region that have revenue generating land.

According to a report prepared by San Bernardino County, the Business Park project will generate $10.7 million in one-time fees and an estimated $1.8 million in annual fees by taxing the net usable square footage of each building all to be used in Bloomington. 

The report states a community benefits agreement will be established for the project to “provide needed funding for multiple community facilities, services, and infrastructure” by ensuring “that proper funding stays within the community of Bloomington.” 

“As a condition for the approval of the project, we are required to have a job fair to try to foster employment from Bloomington,” Howard said. He estimates that this will take place in 2027 or 2028. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

Clouds form over Colton and extend across the Inland Empire as a winter storm approaches, February 25, 2023. In the distance white warehouse buildings line the horizon across San Bernardino County.

Colton is one of eight cities in the region to enact a moratorium against warehousing after the community expressed concerns. The moratorium, started in May 2021, was originally set to last 45 days, but ended up being twice extended and expired May 2023.

When the moratorium was enacted, an ad hoc committee consisting of two city council members and two planning commissioners was established to assess the impacts of warehousing and develop recommendations to benefit the community. However, at a February 2023 Planning Department meeting during public comment, some residents expressed feeling left out of the conversation as there were no community meetings in 2022 about the committee’s work. In February 2023, community activist group Unite Fore Colton reached out to Colton’s Planning Department requesting a meeting to further discuss the committee’s findings. The department, however, responded via email that  they had completed the formal public review period and if the community had specific questions about the ordinance they could email and “the City will respond in kind.”

Developers can now submit applications for new projects and begin construction on projects approved prior to the moratorium. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

Ana Carlos feeds chickens in the yard of her Bloomington farm home, April 11, 2023. She and her family raise horses, goats and chickens on the property, which will back up to the Bloomington Business Park once the project is completed. 

“The lack of support from the people who should represent us was very devastating,” said Carlos. “In the last couple of months we’ve had homes being demolished… there are several streets where there were houses just a couple months or weeks ago, they’re gone and now it’s just a flat field.”

As an organizer with the Concerned Neighbors of Bloomington, Carlos was active in the fight against the Bloomington Business Park. “We were knocking on neighbors’ doors, telling them about the upcoming meeting. We were posting things on social media,” she said. “It was months, and really years, of trying to get the word out there to neighbors.”

“I’m nervous to see what the future will bring to Bloomington. I’m nervous to just imagine millions and millions and millions of square feet of warehouses and thousands of trucks going through our streets and all the pollution that this will bring,” Carlos said. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

Adrian Venegas, owner of Venegas Family Farms in Ontario walks through the pumpkin field as an Amazon Truck passes by, October 31, 2023. The streets surrounding the farm are filled with semi-trucks, constantly passing by. Venegas predicts his farm has one more season left at the patch because the leased land it’s located on is being sold. 

Ontario, once known for its dairy industry, is experiencing a major shift as its open farmland is being developed into warehouses and now sees 82,000 truck trips through the city per day. Over 600 warehouses operate in the city’s 50 square mile radius, which will soon be home to one of the largest warehouses in the world, expected to be completed this year. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

María Elena Hernández (center) holds her granddaughter, Olivia Ruby Abeln, while her son Joaquin Castillejos (left), and husband Enrique Castillejos (right) discuss in their kitchen the struggle that independent truckers like Enrique face, March 2, 2023. With operating costs like diesel fuel and brokerage fees skyrocketing the independent trucking market is in steep decline. 

Although warehousing is a major source of increased truck traffic, this doesn’t always lead to increased opportunities for independent truckers. Enrique is considering converting one of his trucks to a tow truck to make enough for the family to get by. 

Joaquin, who grew up in Bloomington and is a community organizer for the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ) believes that one solution in striking a balance between the logistics industry and impacted communities could be investing in, and protecting independent truckers like his dad. 

“It’s so predatory, the whole industry, because brokers can take as much money as they want,” he said, referring to the brokerage companies that assign loads to be transported to independent truckers and take a cut of their payment. 

When it comes to the idea of transitioning from diesel to electric trucks, another concern for truckers like his dad, Joaquin believes it will be difficult for independent truckers to foot the cost of this transition. Joaquin said this investment should look like “cleaning the trucks without hurting the drivers… independent drivers like my dad are being hurt while big companies like Amazon can do it so easily.” 

In August 2023, the California Air Resources Board announced the Innovative Small E-Fleet (ISEF) voucher incentive, which will distribute $83 million in assistance amongst small fleets, like Enrique’s, to help transitioning to cleaner vehicles. According to the announcement, “Privately owned trucking companies and nonprofits, including independent owner/operators, with 20 or fewer vehicles,” among other requirements, “are eligible and can access funding that can cover costs related to the purchase and operation of zero-emission trucks.”

Joaquin admitted he did not pay much attention to the first few warehouses popping up in Bloomington until he studied sustainability at UC Riverside. 

Subsequently, through his work at CCAEJ, he helped activate and organize his community in the fight against the Bloomington Business Park Specific Plan through door knocking, translating and partnering with local organizations to host informational gatherings. “There’s so many glaring problems in Bloomington. Not just warehouses, these warehouses are here for a reason and it’s because we’ve been ignored, disinvested,” said Castillejos. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

A Werner truck drives past the ONT1 Amazon Sort Center in Mira Loma, which is situated between California State Route 60 West and Interstate 215 North, April 4, 2023. According to the Redford Conservancy at Pitzer College and Radical Research LLC warehouse mapping tool, within the 45 square mile radius of Jurupa Valley, the city that encompasses this area, there are 22 operating warehouses, comprising 11.9 million square feet. There are 8,000 truck trips each day through Jurupa Valley. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

(From left) Stanley Morales and his parents Maria and Francisco Morales pose for a portrait in their home in Bloomington, March 2, 2023. The family, whose livelihood is their independent trucking business, moved from Los Angeles to Bloomington in the late 90’s after Stanley faced a series of health complications their doctor attributed to air quality. Now, Francisco frequently receives calls from real estate brokers asking if he is interested in selling his home to be demolished for warehouse development. 

“We do live with that fear that they’re going to come down on us one day and tell us ‘Hey, you should have taken an offer when we offered you so much for your house. Now we’re only going to pay you so much for your house,’ and you look around and everything’s just gone,” Francisco said in Spanish as his son translated.

“I don’t know when it’s going to come, the moment to leave or to stay,” said Maria in Spanish as her son translated. “I just force myself to stay. But then, to be affected by the pollution and to be more susceptible to cancer, the instability of it all mentally affects and puts a burden on everyone.”

The Morales independent trucking business has significantly slowed as the market for independent truckers faces a steep decline with increasing costs of operations. 

“Fuel is a big portion of our check now, and then you come home and you’re only bringing in $500 for all that work.” The family expressed their frustrations about having a lack of work, despite the multiple warehouses in Bloomington. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

On March 23, 2023, Maria Morales poses for a portrait in her truck as she prepares to leave at nightfall on a job to Las Vegas after months without work. Morales used to take up to three trips a week but recently, she can only find one trip every week and a half with compensation worth taking. 

As a Bloomington resident she worries about the changes within her community resulting from warehouse development. “It’s affected me so much personally that I even dream about it,” she said through translation. “It’s affecting me psychologically.” (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

Truck drivers walk back to their trucks after purchasing items inside the Mira Loma Pilot Flying J Travel Center Truck stop on April 4, 2023. With over 740 locations in 44 states, Pilot Flying J is the largest travel center operator in North America. 

Truck stops can serve as a lifeline for truckers to safely rest and take mandatory driving reset breaks, often offering showers, a gym, chapel, and laundry. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

Gem Montes fastens a portable air monitor on Daisy Vargas’ waistband on April 11, 2023. Vargas, 14, a Colton Middle School student, was one of the eight students that participated in the very first round of Montes’ pilot program, “The Air I Breathe,” which began that same year. Colton students participating in the program monitor and record the air quality around them by wearing these monitors for a week. 

Montes created journal prompts for the students and their parents to record each night of the study, such as “Did you have trouble focusing? Were there too many diesel trucks on your way to work?” 

“Frontline communities are … shouldering this burden of pollution, and other environmental impacts,” Montes said. 

When Montes reached out to the city about a partnership to conduct local air monitoring data in October 2023, Development Services Director, Mark Tomich, said public data of Colton’s air quality already existed. He responded that the city had “conducted an air quality module study a few years back for Colton” which indicated that it shared the same data as air quality monitors stationed throughout the Inland Empire, making it unnecessary to install monitors in Colton.  

Gem said that if city leaders choose to take the issue seriously and allocate resources to monitor air pollutants within the community,’ “Then they have to do something about it. So it’s kind of like a means to an end.”  (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

Candice Youngblood poses for a portrait on the pedestrian bridge, over the 71 freeway in Pomona, that she used to cross walking to school, February 24, 2023. Today, Youngblood, an attorney at Earthjustice, is one of the attorneys litigating the Bloomington Business Park Specific Plan lawsuit. 

EarthJustice is one of the legal firms litigating a case against San Bernardino County for violating the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) for its approval of the development. Their case argues that in approving the Bloomington Business Park Specific Plan, San Bernardino County failed to consider alternatives to the project and analyze and mitigate the project’s impacts, including cumulative environmental impacts, which are requirements set by CEQA. CEQA is a public participation statute and its requirements serve to inform the community that will be impacted, provide community members an opportunity to express their concerns, and help shape the decision related to a project’s development through public review.

Youngblood grew up near four major freeways in Los Angeles County, where her late father, Coy Youngblood Sr., was a diesel truck driver. As a child, she spent time with her dad “working on his truck…sometimes I would go on hauls with him,” she said. “I just never thought about the fact that something we were in contact with was actually having such a negative health impact on us. I was spending so much time around diesel pollution.”

The link between her asthma and the pollution where she grew up became clear to Youngblood during a college course. “What was being described in this case study was the truth of my upbringing. We were actually talking about me,” she said.

Coming from a family of truck drivers, she is committed to developing “blue-green” (blue collar and environmental) solutions in the transition to  clean energy. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

Left: Kristen Malaby holds her daughter Layla Malaby in front of an Amazon warehouse in Fontana, March 2, 2023. Malaby was born and raised in Fontana and can remember when the area was completely undeveloped. She found out she was pregnant with Layla weeks after her injury. Throughout her pregnancy, she was in severe pain and refused painkillers. After Layla was born she could not breastfeed due her pain and mobility issues. Malaby said she deeply concerned over how her injury and resulting pain would affect Layla’s development but is proud to say today she loves reading and excels in school.

As a former Costco warehouse worker, Malaby thought she could advance within the company through managerial positions. But in June 2017, after working there for five years, she awoke unable to fully move her arms. She could not place a toothbrush in her mouth or fasten a seatbelt. After multiple trips to the ER and a series of specialist referrals, she was diagnosed with fourteen injuries in her shoulders, arms, hands and neck, as well as nerve damage from rotating her spine to face the rack where she performed her tasks. 

“What did me in, I think, was the strawberry rhubarb pies. They each weigh three pounds and if there’s 24 of them on the tray, do the math,” Malaby said. “We had to flip and rotate the trays three times in the process… I can’t flip my hands [now], they won’t turn inward.” She later learned that she was the third employee in her department to suffer a shoulder injury, including the manager she was covering for. They all worked on the same part of the assembly line. Malaby filed a lawsuit and Costco was found completely liable. 

“Just one incident can ruin or affect the entire being of one human,” Malaby said. 

Right: Kristen Malaby poses for a portrait on Baseline Street in San Bernardino, where she volunteers in an unhoused encampment site each week, March 1, 2023. 

After her work injury in 2017, she spent time outdoors to cope with her disability when she found a love for helping the unhoused, which led her to found the SoCal Trash Army, a volunteer-run organization that cleans up litter. 

In late 2022, a physician’s assistant from Healthcare in Action joined Malaby on the streets to provide healthcare to the unhoused community. After two months of working together, Malaby was asked to join the Healthcare in Action team as the Lead Navigator for the Inland Empire. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)

A Bloomington resident rides his horse on an open plot of land in front of an existing warehouse, the Bloomington Commerce Center, on April 11, 2023. The Bloomington Business Park will be built directly across from this existing warehouse, where Walter Zimmerman Elementary School currently stands and, according to Howard Industrial Partners, is projected to be demolished in 2026. (Aryana Noroozi for Black Voice News / CatchLight Local)