Argentine EV maker Voltu delivers first trucks from its Riverside plant, 400 jobs planned
City of Riverside: Voltu Motor delivered its first production trucks June 9 from Voltu Forge One – Riverside, with the City as its first customer — and the plant is slated to add about 400 manufacturing, engineering, and operations jobs over four years.
Temecula's wine-club economy runs on the customers the fine-wine trade is panicking about
Citrus Belt Review: The fine-wine investment trade keeps framing younger drinkers as a threat — they drink less, moderate more, and spend on experience over status. In Temecula Valley, that's not a warning. It's the customer the region's direct-to-consumer model was built to serve, and the numbers this year say it's working.
Rancho Cucamonga medical office building sells for $7.1 million
Redlands schools delay YMCA after-school vote, push first review to March
Community Forward Redlands: After awarding the Boys & Girls Club a three-year, $11.25 million contract to run after-school programs at seven schools, Redlands Unified isn't phasing the YMCA out — it's giving the longtime provider a parallel deal and more runway to prove a revamped program works.
Caltrans says Carbon Canyon Road truck ban is temporary, tied to plan to widen switchbacks
Champion Newspapers: Caltrans told about 100 Carbon Canyon residents the truck restriction they'd treated as permanent is temporary — and that the agency has long planned to widen the road's switchbacks to move goods through more efficiently.
Redlands adopts six-stage water shortage plan, can restrict ornamental fountains in a drought
Redlands Community News: The council adopted a stand-alone Water Shortage Contingency Plan after a June 2 public hearing, setting a six-stage framework for rationing water during droughts and supply disruptions.
Riverside County FAIR Plan policies jumped 509% in four years as insurers pulled back from wildfire risk
Citrus Belt Review: California homeowners face the nation's steepest projected premium hike in 2026, but the deeper signal in the Inland Empire is where people are buying coverage. Riverside County's policy count on the state's insurer of last resort rose 509% between September 2021 and September 2025 — from 9,364 to 57,026, the steepest four-year climb among California's large counties.
IE warehouse vacancy hit 7.8% as big tenants moved out, but Q1 leasing jumped 45%
Citrus Belt Review: Inland Empire industrial vacancy rose to 7.8% in the first quarter as four tenants each vacated more than a million square feet — but the headline number lags the demand underneath it. CBRE data shows leasing volume jumped 45.5% over the prior quarter to 22.3 million square feet, the strongest sign yet that occupiers are still committing to the region even as the vacancy rate climbs.
Port of LA forecasts a 7% drop in box volume, and IE warehouses feel it on a lag
Citrus Belt Review: The Port of Los Angeles is forecasting a 7% decline in container volume for fiscal 2026-27, to 9.3 million TEUs — and IE warehouses are where that number eventually lands, on a 30-to-60-day lag.
Riverside Council to appoint James Johnson city attorney at $372,624, waiving public-review rule
The Raincross Gazette: The Council plans to waive the Sunshine Ordinance — which requires items be posted for public review before a vote — to appoint James Johnson city attorney at $372,624 a year ahead of its June 23 meeting.
Chino Hills sales tax measure would raise $11.5M a year against a $4.3M deficit
Champion Newspapers: A one-cent sales tax headed for the Nov. 3 ballot would close a projected $4.3 million gap in a Chino Hills general fund the city expects to run $63.5 million in spending against $59.2 million in revenue.
San Bernardino County Fire deploys robot dog for High Desert rescue operations
Victorville Daily Press: The San Bernardino County Fire Department has debuted a robotic dog to assist with emergency and rescue operations across Victorville and the High Desert. Built by Irvine-based HawkRobo, the four-legged robot handles situational awareness and mapping inside collapsed, hazardous, or otherwise dangerous buildings — keeping firefighters out of the riskiest spaces while crews assess what's inside.
San Bernardino County faces a fair-housing test over the Bloomington warehouse it already lost once
Citrus Belt Review: A San Bernardino judge already forced the county to redo its environmental review of the 213-acre Bloomington Business Park. The harder question is the one still open: whether approving a warehouse that demolished more than 100 homes in an 84% Latino community broke California's fair-housing law — a theory that, if it holds, gives warehouse opponents a tool CEQA doesn't offer.
Ontario airport starts environmental review for new Terminal 3
Ontario International Airport: The airport authority opened a 10-year buildout for public review on May 7, betting that passenger demand already brushing against its current terminals will keep climbing.
Affordable housing project would replace Chino strawberry stand with 210 units
Champion Newspapers: A 210-unit affordable complex is proposed for the eight-acre Mora's Berries site, putting housing density on one of the last working agricultural parcels at a major Chino intersection.
Sleep Number bankruptcy puts its Inland Empire store cluster in play
SupplyChainBrain: Sleep Number's Chapter 11 filing and forced 26-day sale put the fate of its nine-store Inland Empire retail cluster — Redlands, Riverside, Rancho Cucamonga, Corona, Menifee, Hesperia, Montclair, Chino Hills, and Temecula — in the hands of a Canadian buyer, even as the company pledges to keep as many locations open as it can.
Pet food maker Hoa's Global leases 163K SF in Ontario
Connect CRE: Hoa's Global Pet Nutrition is taking a 163,336-square-foot industrial building at 1930 S. Parco Ave. in Ontario as it expands — a deal that pairs standard IE distribution space with a buildout most warehouse leases don't carry.
Franchise loans hit a twelve-quarter high across the IE counties
Citrus Belt Review: SBA lenders approved 29 franchise loans in Riverside and San Bernardino counties in Q1 — the most in three years, and four times the share of a year-ago trough.
San Bernardino transportation authority approves record $1.4 billion budget
IE Business Daily: The San Bernardino County Transportation Authority's $1.4 billion spending plan for fiscal 2026–27 is the largest in its history — roughly $1.1 billion in new revenue against $364 million carried over, a measure of how much freeway, rail, and transit work the county has queued up.
State audit clears RUSD's Measure O spending, faults it on transparency
The Riverside Record: A state auditor reviewing the shelved STEM Academy expansion found Riverside Unified spent its $392 million bond legally but never clearly told voters the money could fund new construction — the gap between what a 2016 ballot measure promised and how a district spends it nearly a decade later.