In the coming weeks, the Irvine City Council will consider stricter regulations, perhaps even a ban, on new warehouses built in the city.
That conversation, slated to take place in early February, will follow the council’s discussion in two weeks about whether to approve a 540,000-square-foot warehouse facility at the Von Karman Corporate Center in the Irvine Business Complex.
At the council’s first meeting of the new year, Mayor Larry Agran signaled that he might not support that particular project while he seeks tougher warehouse regulations in general.
“Frankly, I have strong doubts that warehouses of the magnitude that have come upon us here can be accommodated anywhere in Irvine,” he said during this week’s council meeting. “That’s basically five Costcos of warehousing with approaching 100 loading docks for trucks to come and go. This seems to me so out of scale that we probably ought to have a prohibition on that kind of thing.”
Ahead of the council meeting, Agran and Councilmember Kathleen Treseder co-authored a memo to City Manager Oliver Chi calling for “enhanced warehouse and logistic facility regulations” in the city.
“Large warehouses I don’t think are consistent with our general plan, and they’re not consistent with what our residents want,” Treseder said.
She was particularly concerned with development around the Spectrum and in the Irvine Business Complex.
“These are areas where we are focused on adding more housing,” she said. “If we’re having a trajectory where we’re going to have more residents there, especially affordable housing residents, I do not want them to be subjected to big semi-truck traffic. I think it can be dangerous for kids, cause pollution and it’s just unseemly for Irvine. “
The council voted 4-2 to ask Chi to return to them in February with a slate of warehouse regulations to consider. Councilmembers James Mai and Mike Carroll dissented.
This is not the first time Agran and Treseder have teamed up to try to take a tough stance on warehouse development in Irvine.
In April 2023, the two voted for tougher regulations that would have prevented warehouse developments from expanding into new areas of the city, while also giving the city more discretion to reject warehouse proposals based on business activity, square footage and safety and health concerns.
Although the city’s Planning Commission recommended those changes to the council, only Agran and Treseder approved them, with the three other councilmembers opposed.
Of those three, only Carroll is left on the council.
Since then, California has enacted new legislation to limit where distribution centers can go. Proponents of Assembly Bill 98, signed last year by Gov. Gavin Newsom, say the new regulations will curtail air pollution and traffic from distribution centers. Its critics say the new rules will threaten trade and jobs.
