A vacant 39.2-acre property in the northern part of town will be developed as a freight warehouse for United Parcel Service, a project that the Rialto City Council approved at its meeting Tuesday.
The land, at the southwestern corner of Locust Avenue and Lowell Street, will become the site of a 143,391-square-foot UPS freight terminal, according to a written report by Michael Story, the city's director of Development Services.
City Councilman Joe Baca Jr. and Councilwoman Deborah Robertson were absent from the meeting, but the other three members approved the project without comment.
By its vote, the council certified an environmental impact report that reviewed the effects -- such as increased traffic the warehouse would generate in the area -- and determined that the various concerns had been adequately addressed by the development plan.
Outside the meeting, a UPS representative said the company chose the Rialto site because of its proximity to local freeways, freight railroad tracks and Ontario International Airport.
The site is north of Highway 210, between the Alder Avenue and Ayala Drive connections to the freeway. The stretch of the 210 through Rialto and San Bernardino opened last summer.
UPS hopes to begin construction in 2009 and complete the one-story warehouse in 2010, said William Esquer, a UPS project manager based in the company's West Coast regional office in Laguna Hills.
The warehouse would replace a UPS freight facility in Fontana, said Esquer, who is overseeing the Rialto development.
That freight and those workers would be transferred to the new site, a few blocks northwest of Carter High School. The Rialto freight facility is expected to employ an additional 200 people, beyond the number of workers at the Fontana warehouse, Esquer said.
The Rialto Planning Commission reviewed the proposal at its June 11 meeting and concluded the development wouldn't bring negative repercussions to the neighborhood or to the city.
Just a few miles east of the Rialto property, Highway 210 connects with northbound Interstate 215 in San Bernardino -- which leads to the Cajon Pass, a major trucking route.
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