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.
The national nurse-shortage panic doesn't fit the Inland Empire's RN forecast
Citrus Belt Review: A national study showing RN turnover nearly doubled has the healthcare feed talking shortage again. The IE's bedside-nurse forecast doesn't read that way — but its behavioral-health staffing does, and worse than almost anywhere in the state.
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.
The Data Center That Ate the Warehouse Isn't Coming to the Inland Empire
Citrus Belt Review: The IE has 53.6 million square feet of empty industrial space and the worst power costs in the country — which is exactly why the AI data-center boom converting warehouses elsewhere will skip it.
San Bernardino County puts $900,000 into Rancho Cucamonga's Family Resource Center
IE Business Daily: The county is funding a two-year overhaul of the Arrow Route social-services hub, with the work split between the county and the city.
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.
San Bernardino County approves $10.9B budget, down $26.1M from this year
IE Business Daily: The county's FY2026-27 budget lands $26.1 million below the current year — a 0.24% trim against a $10.9 billion base, the rare government budget that shrinks.
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.
Redlands Community Hospital opens 7,364-square-foot radiation therapy center
IE Community News: Redlands Community Hospital cut the ribbon on its Jack and Laura Dangermond Center for Radiation Therapy, a new build that adds a linear accelerator and a dedicated PET/CT scanner to its Center for Cancer Care — the kind of capacity expansion that keeps oncology patients from driving out of the region for treatment.
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.
Tariffs are hitting Inland Empire construction where it's already weakest
Citrus Belt Review: A third of California's commercial real estate developers say they've delayed or killed projects over construction costs and trade tension — and in the Inland Empire, that cost shock is landing on a building market already running at a decade-low pipeline with more than 50 million square feet of empty warehouse space. The national story is that tariffs squeeze contractor margins. Here, they decide whether the project happens at all.
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.
Kaiser's $1B strike bill lands on Fontana, Riverside, and Ontario
Citrus Belt Review: Kaiser Permanente put the cost of its winter nurses strike above $1 billion. That number is system-wide, but the walkout was heavily an Inland Empire event — and the settlement that ended it reset wage floors for thousands of local healthcare workers at three of the region's busiest hospitals.
The Inland Empire's restaurant wages run below the coast, weakening the local case for service robots
Citrus Belt Review: IE food-service workers average $19.66 an hour — and the metro's overall wage runs about 16% below the LA basin, per BLS May 2024 data. The national story about restaurant robots assumes labor has gotten expensive enough to automate. In the region that automated its warehouses, that case is weaker than almost anywhere in Southern California.
The Tariff Wall Has a Hole in It, and It's in Fontana
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.
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.