When your house is surrounded

by massive warehouses
By Paloma Esquivel

Standing under an aging pavilion in the backyard of

the home she’s lived in for 54 years, Mary Anita
Valdepeña let out a deep sigh and said she’d rather
not be there. “It’s too depressing,” she said.

Her family used to gather in the yard to celebrate

birthdays and holidays, under the shade of the
mulberry trees her husband planted, the rounded
peak of Mt. Baldy in the background.

These days, the yard is overgrown with dandelions,

the mulberries are dying and her view is the towering
concrete wall of a warehouse. A line of semi truck
trailers is parked nearby against another, shorter,
concrete wall at her property line. And from where she
stands, there’s a constant hum — a truck rumbles,
tires squeak, a forklift beeps, metal hits metal.

Mary Anita Valdepeña said after an adjacent warehouse was

built, the condition of her Fontana yard deteriorated, as did her
quality of life.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

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Valdepeña, 79, said she doesn’t go outside unless she

has to, or even open the windows. Doing so lets in the
smell of fumes from idling engines and the sounds of
trucks docking and unloading late into the night.

“You want to know about the warehouses? They

ruined my life,” she said.

The noise, the air pollution and the trucks are a daily
reality for the dozens of working-class, mostly Latino
residents of Rose Avenue in south Fontana. They have
been surrounded by warehouses in the last five years
as the Inland Empire has been transformed into a
national logistics hub, with local officials jockeying to
roll out the red carpet for the industry.

The warehouses have brought thousands of jobs to a

place where residents have often struggled with high
unemployment and long commutes. Their proliferation
makes it possible for Southern Californians to buy
something online and have it arrive at their doors
within hours.

Arianna Diaz, 3, pets family horses in her backyard, which now

abuts a giant warehouse.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

But the industrial boom has brought warehouse

projects closer to homes, despite health warnings
from state air quality officials, who recommend
against housing people within 1,000 feet of such
facilities because of harmful truck pollution.

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In Fontana, where Mayor Acquanetta Warren prides

herself on being nicknamed “Warehouse Warren,”
developers have dramatically reshaped the city,
buying dozens of single-family homes, horse
properties, chicken ranches and other small
businesses and tearing them down to build millions of
square feet of distribution centers for Amazon, UPS
and others.

Developers offered to buy Valdepeña’s home and

those of her neighbors, but they refused to sell, and
the warehouses went up around them. In Valdepeña’s
case, one warehouse’s perimeter wall is right at her
property line, 150 feet from her back window.

“Boxed. We’re boxed in from either direction,” said

Josie Kuhl, 64, who has lived on Rose Avenue for 30
years. “We hear the forklifts at night. The rumbling of
trucks when they’re docking, it’s just nonstop.”

Jerry Denney, in the frontyard of his 35-year Fontana home, has

a view of a warehouse and hears trucks day and night.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Through the decades, Fontana has undergone

continual reinvention — from the small town that drew
Angelenos east with the promise of a more rural life, to
one of the largest steel producers in the nation during
World War II, to a working-class bedroom community
for L.A. and Orange counties.

The warehouses, as Warren sees it, will once again

remake Fontana: from a community whose residents
face arduous commutes into a city where they just
cross the street to get to work.

Warren was born in Compton and left in 1993, the year

after jurors acquitted LAPD officers in the beating of
Rodney King, sending angry residents into the streets.

“My kids, I had to get them out of there,” she said.

She took a job with the city of Upland and settled in

Fontana, where she said she was drawn to the trees,
the parks and the family-oriented community.

Truck traffic has increased significantly on Etiwanda Avenue as

the number of warehouses has grown.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

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In 2011, the year after she became mayor, Warren was

invited to her first ribbon-cutting, a grand opening of
Anna’s Linens. She thought she was going to a retail
store, she said. It wasn’t until she arrived that she
realized it was a massive warehouse.

The company’s CEO pulled her aside and described

the extent to which distributors were already quietly
settling in her town, she recalled.

“He told me, ‘We’re moving product and distributing

throughout the United States right here in Fontana,’”
Warren said. “I had goosebumps when I left there. I
think I’m onto something.”

She went to the Chamber of Commerce and to City

Council members and started looking for ways to
make Fontana accommodating to warehouse
development, she said.

Warren faced a recall effort in 2017 over what her

critics called “reckless residential and warehouse
development.” They criticized her for taking large
amounts of campaign money from developers, but the
mayor remains popular and undeterred.

In the last five years, distribution centers have been squeezing

out Fontana residents.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

“They started calling me ‘Warehouse Warren,’ and at

first I was like, ‘Wow, they’re killing our jobs here.’ But
then I said, ‘You know what, I like that name.’ And I
started going with it,” Warren said. “People tell me, ‘I
used to be on the freeway two hours going to Orange
County,’ and now they go home for lunch.”

During a driving tour of the city, she pointed out the

Sierra Lakes Commerce Center, a new nearly
600,000-square-foot warehouse project on the city’s
north side.

“Look how beautiful, right across from the housing,”

she said, waving at a large tract across the street.

She later directed the driver to Jurupa Avenue, a major

road in south Fontana.

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Big rigs pass schoolchildren waiting at a bus stop in Fontana.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

“It used to be when people would come here, all of

this was a hot mess. One night, a goat ran out in front
of my car,” Warren said. “Now … look how clean it is.”

The north side of the street was a line of new

warehouses. On the south side was a tract with
hundreds of single-family homes.

Tucked behind one warehouse, invisible from the

street, were the about three dozen homes in the Rose
Avenue neighborhood. Just down the street, about
half a dozen boarded-up homes sat behind a chain
link fence.

A sign on the fence announced that three warehouses,

totaling 1.1 million square feet, would soon be put in
their place. Nearby was St. Mary Catholic Church,
where officials said they too had been approached by
developers wanting to buy the property. They turned
down the offer.

Boarded-up homes in the city will be replaced by 1.1 million

square feet of warehouses.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times )

In the last decade, more than 150 million square feet

of industrial space, the vast majority of it warehouses,
has been built in the Inland Empire, according to real
estate services company CBRE.

In that time, about 54 warehouses have been built or

are under construction in Fontana, totaling about 16
million square feet, and about 100 homes have been
sold and demolished to make way for those projects,
city officials said.

Warren acknowledged that there had been some

“growing pains” related to development — but she
dismissed most criticism. The city follows state and
federal law when it comes to these projects, she said.
And air pollution, she said, gets swept away by wind.

Motorists contend with truck traffic on Etiwanda Avenue south of

the 60 Freeway.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

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Residents complaining about things like truck traffic

should consider their own shopping habits, she said.

“People keep ordering stuff, and then they wonder

why you need trucks and movement and all that. It’s
hilarious. Quit ordering stuff, you know?” she said.

Valdepeña has witnessed Fontana’s reinventions first-

hand. Her husband worked for Kaiser Steel for 25
years, until the mills closed down in the 1980s. He got
a pension and healthcare benefits that helped sustain
her family for years, she said.

These days, her son works in warehouses through a

temp agency.

“They work them for three months and then ... they
don’t hire them,” she said.

In 1965, when Valdepeña and her husband built their

home on Rose Avenue, the couple and their children
were surrounded by empty fields, citrus groves and
grapevines.

Over the years, they bought additional plots on the

street and built homes for other family members. Then
other residents began to build nearby, until Rose
Avenue had dozens of homes.

Eventually, a juice-box packing company opened on

the street’s west end. There were truck-storing
businesses and a chicken ranch nearby, and some
residents ran their own small businesses from their
homes.

When Mary Anita Valdepeña and her husband built their Rose
Avenue home in 1965, it was surrounded by fields, citrus groves
and grapevines.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

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But the street has kept a rural feel. Most of the lots are
about half an acre, with small single-story homes.
Some families keep goats, chickens and horses out
back.

A few years ago, developers invited the residents of

Rose Avenue to a meeting at a park, Valdepeña and
many of her neighbors recalled. They offered to buy
their homes but said, for the deal to work, everyone
had to agree.

“The majority didn’t want to sell because they were

offering very little,” said Socorro Bogarin, 38.

Still, Bogarin said, she’s not troubled by the

warehouses around her.

“I’m comfortable,” she said. “They can keep making

warehouses, and I’ll stay.”

Aiden Kuhl, 4, and Braiden Roberts, 10, play in the backyard of

Aiden’s home, next door to a giant warehouse.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Bogarin pointed to a road she said was improved when

the warehouses came and said she preferred knowing
there were jobs to be had inside the massive
buildings.

But some officials are starting to express concern

about the proliferation of warehouses near homes
without an adequate buffer.

Experts have long warned about elevated asthma and

cancer risks near warehouse distribution centers and
other freight hubs because of the pollution emitted by
trucks — physicians have even labeled these places
“diesel death zones.”

The state Air Resources Board recommended in 2005

that houses be at least 1,000 feet from warehouses,
based on estimates that pollution concentrations drop
by 80% at that distance.

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“That 1,000-foot buffer is cited in many cities as a

recommendation, as a mitigation measure, but
unfortunately it’s not taken seriously,” said Andrea
Vidaurre, a policy analyst with the Center for
Community Action and Environmental Justice, a local
advocacy group.

Jovita Diaz and 3-year-old Arianna head to their backyard, which

has horses and a view of a warehouse.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Diesel trucks have gotten cleaner in the decade since

the state board made its recommendation. But
warehouse projects are also getting bigger, often
500,000 square feet or larger.

In the last two years, city and county officials

throughout the region have approved several major
projects that would sit right next to homes — some
100 feet or less from property lines — despite
sometimes heated opposition from activists and
residents concerned about the effects of traffic, noise
and pollution.

In early 2017, Riverside residents took to City Hall

carrying signs that said: “No Megahouses next to our
neighborhoods,” as officials approved a 1.4-million-
square-foot warehouse project in the Sycamore
Canyon Business Park, with one proposed building just
100 feet away from property lines in a neighborhood
of tract homes.

Warehouse projects have encroached on homes in Fontana.

Residents worry about the health consequences.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

That summer, San Bernardino County supervisors

approved a 680,000-square-foot warehouse in the
unincorporated community of Bloomington, just 90
feet from some residential properties and 260 feet
from an elementary school. Later, at a meeting in
which they were confronted by dozens of angry
residents and activists, they voted to rezone 17 acres
of residential land for a 344,000-square-foot
warehouse facility just 50 feet from some residents’
property lines.

And earlier this year, Fontana approved the West

Valley Logistics Center, a proposed 3.4-million-
square-foot warehouse project that would be
bordered by a large neighborhood.

Residents and activists have pushed back against

these projects, to little effect.

“I don’t think many of our groups are really stopping

the warehouses. I think they have a plan and it doesn’t
matter what the community says,” said Kim Rocha, a
resident of Bloomington who organized for years to try
to stop the proposed development there.

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A few weeks ago, trucks arrived and began grading

the land for the warehouse.

It will rise directly behind Rocha’s home.

The sun sets in Fontana, where the mayor says complaining

residents should consider their own shopping habits: “People
keep ordering stuff, and then they wonder why they need trucks.”
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)