The Menifee Valley Business Center on Highway 74 covers 4.6 million square feet. (Staff photo)
Final installment in a three-part series on land use in Menifee.
Warehouse.
It has become a dirty word in Menifee, and that’s understandable. To many residents of Menifee, the word warehouse represents huge, ugly buildings amid the rural landscape they’d like to preserve. It means additional truck traffic, noise, and questionable air quality.
On the other hand, warehouses that are filled with useful production create jobs for a community that badly needs them. Warehouses help pay for improved infrastructure, which can compensate for some of the increased traffic.
The questions we try to address here are:
— How many of the current warehouses are occupied?
— How many more are in the construction process?
— How many projects have recently been approved and appear to be nearing construction?
— Where should the city draw the line?
Our intent is not to defend or attack the concept of warehouses in Menifee. This article focuses on letting residents know as accurately as possible what the current situation is and the factors involved. So here we go:
Menifee has two areas zoned for industrial use – the Northern Gateway, which is located south of Ethanac Road on both sides of the 215 Freeway; and the Southern Gateway, which is primarily the area of Zeiders Road between Scott Road and Keller Road. Currently, only the Southern Gateway has any completed warehouses – five, to be exact.
The project was built in two phases and was originally called Commerce Pointe 1 and Commerce Pointe 2. Three of the five buildings in what is now called Gateway at Menifee are occupied. Tenants for two of the buildings include the following “small” businesses:
— Chute Systems — trash and laundry chutes for high rise buildings
— David’s Toothpaste – production and distribution
— DBS associates — HVAC
— Solar Demolition Services, LLC
— Commencal — specialized off-road bicycles
— Red Bull Distribution Company
— Rancho Distribution – agricultural production
— Music Store — musical instruments
The third building in that complex has recently become occupied by the Menifee Union School District as a site for food preparation for school meals. The estimated total employees in those three buildings is 83.
Of the two remaining buildings, one recently came under new ownership. It was recently purchased for $40.5 million by Southwest Traders, a temperature-controlled food distribution hub founded in 1977 and based in Temecula. In expanding to the Menifee location, the company plans to convert the 229,934-square-foot building into a refrigerated food distribution center. According to company officials, it is expected to create 250 jobs at opening and expand to 500 employees within five years.
The Gateway at Menifee is located on Zeiders Road south of Scott Road. (Staff photo)
Salary details for those employees obviously aren’t available, but the company states that the workforce will include “warehouse operations, logistics coordination, CDL drivers, and administrative staff.”
In addition, the Southern Gateway has another project in the development process with plans for more (but smaller) buildings. The Pemcor Business Park is scheduled to be located between Zeiders Road and Howard Way on property formerly owned by the Bouris family, a pioneer farming family. The project was approved by the City Council in February. It is planned to cover 337,770 square feet across 11 single-story buildings (23,100–37,840 square feet each) on 20 acres.
This project would be classified as a business park rather than a warehouse complex. According to Pemcor Properties, its intended uses are light industrial, manufacturing, service commercial, and office space. It is designed to be a multi‑tenant campus, complementing Gateway at Menifee with smaller, flexible spaces for local manufacturers and service firms.
Such a project indicates a willingness by some developers to offer smaller buildings in industrial zones. An example is the City of Menifee’s plan for an Innovation District, which would include the Pemcor Business Park. Such a plan would buck the recent trend of “big box” buildings.
“After COVID, the demand was for larger warehouse space that can accommodate a product, whether manufacturing or distribution,” said Gordon Mize of Lee & Associates, a major commercial developer in the area. “They needed more space to store things because of the impacts on transportation from COVID.”
According to Mize, that’s when the real explosion of warehouses began in cities such as Perris – to store and distribute items ordered by customers who became used to buying more of their products online. Now some cities are rethinking their plans for such areas and are beginning to envision business parks with smaller buildings. So far, however, the market for such buildings hasn’t been very hot.
“In all of Riverside County, there are zero vacancies in anything over 800,000 square feet,” said Bryan Jones, assistant city manager for the City of Menifee. “But there’s a huge vacancy in the 250-500,000 square-foot range. Bigger buildings are in really high demand. Smaller buildings … people are able to shop around for the best price.”
Mize says the building industry may be in a bit of a holding pattern while the market figures itself out.
“The City has re-envisioned what they want in the southern border,” Mize said. “We just need to have more infrastructure in place to build small buildings, and that’s the cheapest building we can build.
“The City’s making progress. I think they’re trying to change zoning in the Southern Gateway to allow for some additional growth. It’s important for the future so you can get to more mixed-use retail and some residential.”
The Menifee Commerce Center is being built at Ethanac and Sherman roads. (Staff photo)
Infrastructure is also a challenge in the Northern Gateway, where there has been much more interest by developers but where there is little infrastructure to start with. On the east side of the freeway, two major warehouse projects are in mid-construction.
The Menifee Valley Business Park is a huge complex that is nearing completion south of Highway 74 near Heritage High School. It covers 4.6 million square feet across five buildings on 265 acres, making it the largest industrial campus in the city. There are no announced tenants signed for those buildings at this point.
The Menifee Commerce Center is a building of more than 1 million square feet being constructed at Ethanac Road and Sherman Road, also east of the 215 Freeway. It is listed for lease this fall but “has no confirmed tenants yet.” Its intended use is listed by the developer as “e-commerce, general consumer products distribution, and automated logistics.”
Two other warehouse projects are in the planning stages east of the freeway. According to a City staff report, “The Motte Business Center (Ethanac and Dawson roads) is a proposed merger of 47.1 gross acres into a single parcel for an industrial building 1,138,638 square feet in size. The entitlement has been approved, and the project is currently in final engineering.”
The same staff report states that “The Heritage Valley Business Center (between Trumble Road and Sherman Road south of Ethanac) is a proposed merger of 40.4 gross acres into a single parcel for an industrial building 829,000 square feet in size. The entitlement process is currently ongoing.”
Then there’s the Northern Gateway section west of the freeway and south of Ethanac Road. That one is more difficult to assess. The area is a mix of vacant land parcels, scattered private residences, and small rural businesses. It is most well known for the recent case in which the appeal of the 517,720-square-foot Murrieta Warehouse project to be built next to a small residential community was denied, thus approving the project.
The City could be blamed in part for that one. The area was zoned residential by the county when those homes were built. A few years after Menifee incorporated, the city made a zone change to create an economic development corridor in that area. The small group of houses on Floyd Avenue was allowed to remain within that zone in a “nonconforming use” status, according to Community Development Director Orlando Hernandez.
When a developer finally showed interest in the vacant land next door, the issue became somewhat of a case study for the “warehouse vs. residents” issue.
Complicating matters is the fact that the area has no infrastructure such as paved roads, sewers or storm drains. Developers could pay for a part of that if they decided it was cost effective to do so. Few have made commitments in that area so far, however, even though city records show that at one time or another, at least nine other applications have been submitted to the city for industrial projects in that area.
Most haven’t advanced too far in the application process or are in limbo, primarily because of the ongoing litigation between the cities of Menifee and Perris over development along the Ethanac Corridor.
Another fairly recent legislation could be a factor in the development of the area – a topic on which not all city officials agree. That was the 2025 enactment of AB 98, which Menifee 24/7 reported at the time “imposes minimum distance between logistics facilities and sensitive uses. AB 98 specifically targets Inland Empire regions such as Perris and Moreno Valley, where a proliferation of warehouses has caused public concern about air quality, noise, and traffic.”
How seriously should AB 98 be taken in discussions of possible rezoning in that area? In a May 20, 2025 City Council meeting, Hernandez told council members that the impact of AB 98 on Menifee’s Northern Gateway EDC will be significant enough to result in a reduction of applications for warehouses and logistics facilities.
At the same time, City Manager Armando Villa suggested that some warehouse construction would still be required in order to help fund the infrastructure that is badly needed for whatever ends up there.
“That whole area has no infrastructure,” Villa said. “It’s over 600 acres. We wanted to capitalize on the market that was presented to us. That will free up more areas for other types of development. Unless we spend 60 or 70 million on infrastructure, we won’t be able to capitalize on these opportunities.
“We never intended to plaster this whole area with buildings. We’re just taking advantage of the current market.”
Presenting an opposing view at a Planning Commission meeting in 2025 was commissioner Chris Thomas, who spoke in favor of a zone change even though he felt forced to vote in favor of the Northern Gateway Logistics Center (between Evans and Barnett roads) in May of that year.
“We need to change the permitted uses for this area,” Thomas said. “The City Council needs to change things so no more of these come in. This is supposed to be a combination of warehouses and housing.
“I call for our City Council to make a change, or we will end up with nothing but warehouses. Right now, it’s difficult to say no without getting hit with a lawsuit.”
No such change has been made. So the debate continues regarding warehouses in Menifee. Does the potential of improved infrastructure and more local jobs offset the negative aspects of increased truck traffic and the complaints of residents? That’s the question of the day.
Meanwhile, the latest appeal of a warehouse project will be heard at Wednesday night’s City Council meeting. Actually, three appeals have been filed against the Planning Commission’s approval of the Trumble and Watson Warehouse project east of the freeway, including one by Mayor Ricky Estrada.
This is a story that won’t have an ending for a while.
Editor’s final note: We appreciate those of you who took the time to wade through three very long news articles on land use in Menifee. We hope they have at least shed some light on the challenges facing our community. Remember, comments in person at city meetings have much more impact than Facebook comments, because comments on social media do not become part of the public record. Here at Menifee 24/7, we pledge to continue examining the issues as well.
