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Business & money
Real estate, manufacturing and logistics, tribal economy, wine country, capital markets — the business of California's Inland corridor.
Citrus Belt Review: SBA lenders approved 230 loans for IE businesses in the first quarter — down 23% from a year ago — but the dollars held flat at $128 million. The average loan jumped 30%.
Citrus Belt Review: The IE average rent rose 1.0% to $2,320 in Q1, reversing two quarters of declines — the gains landing in older, cheaper units as new Class A product still gets absorbed. The national market, by contrast, has stalled.
Loma Linda University Health: The Whipple is one of the most complex operations in abdominal surgery — removing parts of the stomach, duodenum, pancreas, and bile duct to treat tumors in those organs. Moving it to a robotic platform is a capability marker for a community hospital, not a routine service-line add.
Citrus Belt Review: An ownership change in local freight, part of a quarter where buyout loans doubled their share.
Real Estate & Development
Citrus Belt Review: The IE average rent rose 1.0% to $2,320 in Q1, reversing two quarters of declines — the gains landing in older, cheaper units as new Class A product still gets absorbed. The national market, by contrast, has stalled.
IE Business Daily: Indio's $45 million police headquarters anchors the final phase of a Public Safety Campus that already holds a fire station, dispatch center, and a 22,000-square-foot services building — a multi-year municipal build with ground breaking this summer and completion set for spring 2028.
ConnectCRE: A 12-year Chino tenant moves to a never-occupied Class A building — the kind of flight-to-new-product absorption the IE West submarket has been counting on.
Citrus Belt Review: Rents turned positive in Q1 after two years of softening, and the 2026 delivery pipeline is 27% smaller. The IE ran the national overbuilding cycle in miniature — and the exit is now visible.
Manufacturing & Logistics
Citrus Belt Review: An ownership change in local freight, part of a quarter where buyout loans doubled their share.
ConnectCRE: A 12-year Chino tenant moves to a never-occupied Class A building — the kind of flight-to-new-product absorption the IE West submarket has been counting on.
LMA Consulting Group: Claremont supply chain consultant Lisa Anderson says delivery times are at their longest since 2022 — and the Strait of Hormuz only explains part of it.
Citrus Belt Review: The national story says AI is taking warehouse jobs. The corridor's actual filings tell a different one — for now.
Tribal economy
Morongo Band of Mission Indians: The tribe's outreach program has now moved more than $1.7M to 400-plus groups since 2022.
Morongo Nation: The tribe gave $300,000 to the Cherries of the Pass Foundation to support the May 28-31 festival in Beaumont, continuing a recurring sponsorship of one of the Pass area's signature events.
Inland Empire Business Journal: Multi-year deals with the new Tower Buzzers (Dodgers affiliate) and the Quakes — whose field is now Morongo Field at the Epicenter.
Wine country
Citrus Belt Review: New coffee concept seeks an on-sale beer & wine eating-place license at 31333 Temecula Pkwy; no public presence yet.
Citrus Belt Review: France's red-white co-ferment is the chillable wine of summer 2026. No Temecula producer pours one yet — but the climate argument and the raw materials are already in the valley.
Hinman & Carmichael: Glass bottles and cans are exempt under the Bottle Bill, but the shipping boxes and plastic wrap wineries use to move product are covered — and producers must register or file for an exemption by May 31.
Capital markets
Citrus Belt Review: An ownership change in local freight, part of a quarter where buyout loans doubled their share.
Citrus Belt Review: SBA lenders approved 230 loans for IE businesses in the first quarter — down 23% from a year ago — but the dollars held flat at $128 million. The average loan jumped 30%.
IE Business Daily: The chicken chain keeps treating the Inland Empire as a growth market — about 100 jobs at the new Ontario Ranch store, its third in the city.
Inland Empire Economic Intelligence: The headline number masks a split: transportation is doing all the work. Strip out gas and autos and the picture is stable to cooling — restaurant inflation is decelerating and shelter costs have leveled off after three rough years.
People & moves in business
IE Business Daily: Evans had run the department on an interim basis since February; the permanent appointment puts a settled hand over Riverside's development pipeline.
Inside UCR: Girod moves up from CHASS, where he ran communications for eight years, into the university-wide role — an internal pick after a national search to lead a team that handles media relations, brand, digital, and crisis communications for the campus.
The Raincross Gazette: Permanent now after four months as interim; oversaw a run that pulled in six international firms and 700-plus jobs.
From the Long Read
Citrus Belt Review: Steel imports are down 30% and Washington calls it a win. The Inland Empire's flagship steelmaker imports its raw material — which makes the corridor the place where the tariff bill actually gets paid.
Citrus Belt Review: CARB killed its clean-fleet rules last fall. Six months later, the I-215 corridor has a doubled depot, a 9-megawatt hub, and a $100 million truck order behind it. The demand outlived the mandate.
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Business Archives
LLUMC-Murrieta performs its first robotic-assisted Whipple
Loma Linda University Health: The Whipple is one of the most complex operations in abdominal surgery — removing parts of the stomach, duodenum, pancreas, and bile duct to treat tumors in those organs. Moving it to a robotic platform is a capability marker for a community hospital, not a routine service-line add.