Edison to Spend Millions at March

In a move designed to jump start western Riverside County’s economy, Southern California Edison on Tuesday announced plans to invest more than $23 million to help transform a portion of the former March Air Force Base into a business park and air cargo hub.

The money will upgrade the old base’s electrical infrastructure over a decade, allowing for redevelopment and the creation of an estimated 15,000 jobs over 10 to 15 years in the commuter-choked region.

“This is a housing-rich, job-poor area,” said Lori Stone, director of operations for the March Joint Powers Authority, which is Edison’s partner in the venture. “We’re trying to get the folks off the freeways and back home again.”

The agency, with members representing the county and the adjacent cities of Perris, Moreno Valley and Riverside, oversees development on about 4,000 acres of the closed base along the 215 Freeway.

March reduced its size in 1996, and a third of it is still used by Air Force reservists as March Air Reserve Base.

The base’s overhauled electrical system will power a 1,290-acre March Business Park, with 16 million square feet of industrial and office space being developed by LNR Property Corp. In addition, the air cargo company DHL plans to open a hub on land at the former base in October, Stone said.

The plans have come under fire from nearby residents worried about potential noise and air pollution from round-the-clock flights and proposed businesses.

Advocates believe private development at the former base will revitalize an area that absorbed the loss of roughly 9,000 military and civilian jobs nearly a decade ago, bringing “more economic opportunities close to home,” said Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona).

“The 215 corridor is very ripe for development,” said John C. King, a federal account and base reuse manager at Southern California Edison.

The strip along that freeway could constitute “the next major economic area of the Inland Empire,” said John Husing, an economist who studies the Inland Empire.

Husing said the area’s flat, developable land and growing population was slowly attracting both blue- and white-collar businesses. Edison’s investment is “one of the pieces of the puzzle that has to be put in place for the long-term success of that region,” he said.

Edison hopes to attract business tenants to the park with energy incentives, said company spokesman Charles Wilson.

The Joint Powers Authority considered managing its own electric utility, but decided the financial risks were too great.

“To take on something as huge as the electrical distribution system would take a lot more resources than we have at hand right now,” Stone said.