California Warehouse Bill Heads To Governor's Desk As CRE Opposition Builds
Community warehouse pushback may soon have new ammunition if a warehouse bill that passed the state legislature is signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The bill, AB 98, passed the state Assembly and the state Senate last week, just hours before the deadline for bills to pass this session, the LA Daily News reported.
“This is an issue that is felt acutely in the Inland Empire where we are home to well over 1 billion square feet of warehousing, over 4,000 warehouses and approximately 600,000 truck trips a day,” Assemblymember Eloise Gómez Reyes Reyes said in a statement marking the bills passing the legislature.
The bill would require new warehouses to be built hundreds of feet from homes and schools, on main roads and those already served by commercial traffic. The rules also call for 300-foot setbacks between so-called sensitive uses and the warehouse’s loading bay for new projects in industrially zoned areas. Setbacks would be 500 feet if the project is not in an industrial area or was rezoned to accommodate the project, according to the Daily News.
The bill is sponsored by Gómez Reyes of Colton and Juan Carrillo of Palmdale. Gómez Reyes previously proposed bills seeking to regulate where larger warehouses can be built.
Commercial real estate groups are organizing members to urge the governor to veto the bill, which "imposes prescriptive and impractical mandates that usurp local control and stifle economic growth and drive businesses out," according to a sample veto request letter from NAIOP SoCal.
Some organizations that have agitated for dramatically scaling back warehouse construction are also urging the governor to veto the bill, but on the grounds that the legislation doesn't go far enough.
AB 98 doesn't have anything to say about warehouses smaller than 250K SF and could potentially exclude smaller vehicles like those used for last-mile deliveries, the San Joaquin and Eastern Coachella Valley-based nonprofit Leadership Council said in an Instagram post.
Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign the bill. If signed, the legislation would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2025. Newsom did not respond to a request for comment from Bisnow.
