City Hall is out here playing wet nurse, breast feeding developers, changing their diapers and handing them another three years to get their warehouses off the ground.
Cyanotype by Fernanda Durazo ©2026
Some slick—suit, cheap suit architect Kevin Alcantara stands up at a 2023 Planning Commission hearing and starts shamelessly bragging about how much he loves gentrifying and paving over the Inland Empire. This is his team’s seventh industrial monolith in Highland, and their pet architect is busy droning on about how "the market dictates the building’s height" because their faceless corporate tenants need maximum vertical clearance to stack their plastic imported garbage.
"We definitely like developing in this city," Alcantara says, grinning like an absolute parasite who just swallowed a zoning loophole.
Later in the meeting, Chair Randall Hamerly asks the groundbreaking question of why there aren’t taller trees along Fifth Street—because, you know, Highland is basically a sun-baked, asphalt dust bowl and shade is a baseline human right. Alcantara explains, with a completely straight face, that the design team didn't want to obscure the building. Let that sink in. They are actively blocking shade in a literal desert because nobody must disrupt the majestic vista of a concrete coffin. They act like Welton Becket personally descended from architectural heaven to sketch the damn thing. It’s a warehouse, you tools. What exactly are we supposed to stand across the street admiring? The exquisite texture of tilt-up concrete? They need room to stack merchandise, but actual living trees have to step aside so everyone can worship a glorified storage unit. Meanwhile, there is a preschool full of toddlers literally right next to the site. Somehow, the aesthetic feelings of a giant grey box have become a crisis requiring deep bureaucratic reflection before the thing even exists.
The corporate entity behind this masterclass in local degradation is called Patriot Partners. A guy named Kevin Rice is the applicant listed on the city’s paperwork for this 53,665-square-foot monstrosity on Fifth and Central. And because one concrete scar isn't enough to satisfy their greed, Patriot has another 48,000-square-foot warehouse proposed over on Sixth Street, positioned directly across from Indian Springs High School. The kids were already there. These aren't new schools moving into an industrial zone; these are existing classrooms full of human children being surrounded by diesel truck bays. But to these spreadsheet-bumping sociopaths, a school isn't a place of learning—it’s just a spatial constraint on a map that the developer has to maneuver around.
By 2026, the wheels started falling off the developer's grift. Patriot Partners slinked back to the city crying for more time. The July staff reports laid it out bare: limited tenant demand, trouble securing construction financing, and "economic uncertainty." In plain English, the magical, infallible "market" they used to justify the warehouse's massive height did a completely garbage job of actually getting it built. So Patriot demanded a three-year extension to keep their approvals on life support until the cash started flowing again. And what did Highland’s planning staff do? They immediately bent over backward and recommended giving the developers exactly what they wanted.
Meanwhile, the working-class families living around these dust lots get to keep waiting too. They get to spend their Tuesday nights sitting in drafty municipal gymnasiums, checking bureaucratic agendas, and explaining for the fiftieth time to a panel of glazed-eye politicians why staging hundreds of diesel semi-trucks next to a playground might be bad for developing lungs. The developer’s financial incompetence is treated as a valid excuse for a government handout, while the neighborhood’s real-world suffering is just filed away as a footnote in the public record.
Those recommendations to bail out the developer came straight from Community Development Director Lawrence Mainez, were rubber-stamped by Assistant Director Kim Stater, and meticulously typed up by Senior Planner Angela Tafolla. These people knew exactly what they were doing. Their own reports explicitly point out the Head Start preschool next to the Fifth Street site. They explicitly name Indian Springs High School on Sixth, the residential home to the west, and the Villa Del Rosa condominiums to the south. The city literally mapped out every single human being who will be forced to breathe in truck exhaust. It’s all right there in black and white. Nobody had to pretend the neighborhood was empty; they looked at every house, every school, and every crying parent, and still said, "Yeah, let’s build it." Apparently, knowing better is totally compatible with selling out your community anyway.
On July 21, the Planning Commission approved the extensions unanimously. Chair Randall Hamerly, Vice Chair Chandra Thomas, and commissioners Nicole McCance, Jarrod Miller, and Brent Merideth all eagerly voted yes. More than 20 locals showed up to beg them not to do it. Hamerly. Thomas. McCance. Miller. Merideth. Write those names down on a wall of shame. A completely spineless, unanimous decision shouldn’t get to hide behind the vague shield of "the commission." The residents did exactly what the civics textbooks told them to do: they showed up, they participated, and they got completely ignored so a developer wouldn't lose a buck. The public participated, which is apparently supposed to make losing your entire evening feel worthwhile.
Even the school district stepped in to fight the extensions. Thomas Pace, the director of facilities planning for the San Bernardino City Unified School District, sent a letter urging the city to kill the project, citing blindingly obvious concerns about toxic diesel pollution, pedestrian safety, blocked school buses, and trapped emergency vehicles. These are basic, everyday things you worry about when you're in charge of kids. Parents just want their children to cross the street without getting flattened by a logistics truck. But somehow, the community had to audition and plead just to keep these warehouse plans from hanging over their heads forever.
Don't worry, though—Highland’s bureaucrats have the warehouse's outfit completely under control. The Fifth Street report specifies that the site will feature five loading docks, an eight-foot screen wall next to the preschool, and a meticulously curated exterior color palette: Superwhite, Peppercorn, and Iron Ore. An entire little civilization of tasteful, artisanal industrial finishes, assembled right next to a playground. Wow! Superwhite! Peppercorn! Iron Ore! Truly revolutionary stuff. Whatever else happens to the air quality, at least the concrete coffin will look highly coordinated. The professionals have moved on to matching paint swatches while the parents are left worrying about asthma.
Back at the original hearing, Commissioner Miller actually abstained from voting because the building was way too damn high. But by July 2026, he folded like a cheap lawn chair, joining the unanimous cult of the yes-vote. The city defends this with the ultimate paper shield: an environmental justification under CEQA Guidelines Section 15162, claiming their old reviews are "adequate" and no further environmental scrutiny is required. They claim their "mitigation measures" will magically reduce the toxic impact below a threshold of significance. That's the bureaucratic fiction. Parents are still allowed to look at a truck terminal next to a sandbox and see a disaster. Shuffling papers does not mean the locals have to applaud the poisoning of their zip code.
The final appeals dragged this mess all the way to the top—reaching Mayor Penny Lilburn, Mayor Pro Tem Jimmy Saldana, and council members Gregory Hogan, Larry McCallon, and John P. Timmer on October 13. The agenda featured a bunch of sterile LLC names like "Patriot 5th & Central" and recommended denying the neighborhood's appeals. Unsurprisingly, the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice reported that the council rammed the extensions through anyway, putting a corporate developer’s bottom line directly ahead of human health.
While the politicians hide behind their official titles, the actual people of Highland deserve to be named too. Janet Seaton, a resident of 49 years, described a predominantly Black, Latino, and elderly neighborhood where people can’t just pack up and leave when the air turns toxic. Maria Sanchez spoke out about the pure terror of watching kids navigate a gauntlet of semi-truck traffic just to get to class. These women aren't waiting for a market correction to start utilizing the neighborhood; they actually live there. The homes are occupied. The schools are full. Nobody needed a logistics tenant to give this community a purpose. Yet the city treated the developer's broken wallet as an emergency, while treating the residents' lives as a bureaucratic nuisance.
Highland’s leadership owes everyone an explanation for why they are protecting these warehouse plans with such desperate, pathetic persistence. What makes a failed concrete box worth more than the families living in its shadow? The developer's financing problems explain why they want more time, but they don't explain why a mother living next door should be happy to give it to them. And when Lilburn, Saldana, Hogan, McCallon, and Timmer explain what kind of city they want Highland to be, they are telling the world that they prefer a profitable, smog-choked truck stop over their own citizens.
SOURCE
Highland Planning Commission minutes, September 19, 2023. Item 5, PDF pages 4–8. Architect’s remarks, building height, tree discussion and Miller’s abstention.
Fifth Street warehouse staff report, July 21, 2026. City report reproduced on Scribd. Project specifications, school proximity, exterior finishes, financing delays and staff recommendation.
Sixth Street warehouse staff report, July 21, 2026. City report reproduced on Scribd. Project specifications, surrounding schools and homes, financing delays and staff recommendation.
Highland public hearing notice. Identifies Kevin Rice and Patriot Partners as applicant/owner.
Manny Sandoval, Inland Empire Community News: “Highland Extends Warehouse Permits Near Schools in Area Home to 20,000 Residents”. Reporting on the July 21 commission votes, residents’ statements and school district letter.
Fifth Street extension: October Notice of Determination. City filing recording approval October 13, 2026, posted October 19.
Sixth Street extension: October Notice of Determination. City filing recording approval October 13, 2026, posted October 19.
October 13 council agenda, reproduced by Muyni. Items 18 and 19: appeals, applicant LLCs and staff recommendations.
Official Highland City Council roster. Councilmembers’ names and titles.
Julian Lucas is a darkroom photographer, writer, and bookseller, though photography remains his primary language. He is the founder of Mirrored Society Book Shop, publisher of The Pomonan, and creator of Book-Store and Print Pomona Art Book Fair. And he will charge you $ 2.5 million for event photography.
