The Inland Empire region of Southern California has experienced a commercial explosion in recent months and years, signaling the decline of the Great Recession. While this is great news for cities like Redlands, San Bernardino, and the like, it also is a great reflector of the comeback of the Southern California commercial real estate market.
Alicia Hornyak, Senior Sales Associate at Coldwell Banker Commercial SC, is at the forefront of the commercial scene in the Inland Empire market.
“I see the Redlands area especially starting to grow a lot as big box retail distribution makes the biggest push at the moment,” Hornyak said. “There have been numerous land sales in the San Bernardino area for commercial development.”
So why is the Inland Empire the new up-and-coming place within Southern California? The answer is simple: there is simply a scarcity of room in other parts of the region. The Los Angeles and Orange County areas have essentially merged into a mega-metropolis, while the Inland Empire has room to spare. This is due to the arid, desert landscape that San Bernardino and Riverside Counties are famous for.
Luckily, commercial expansion inevitably gives rise to an influx in job availability.
“With many buyers and tenants coming to the Inland Empire from both in-state and out-of-state, the job offerings coming available seem to be fairly diverse. We can expect to see a lot of warehouse and distribution jobs opening up as well as retail positions,” Hornyak said. “The great thing about commercial growth is that we can very specifically pinpoint what sectors will have greater job availability, since commercial brokerage inevitably reflects the employment landscape.”
At the moment, office properties are slowly regaining traction coming out of the recession; however, the real prosperous sectors are retail and industrial properties, according to Hornyak. For example, Amazon recently opened a warehouse in Redlands, marking the beginning of a giant move-in from some of the world’s largest retailers.
With such promise on the horizon, the possibility of revamping San Bernardino County’s rough reputation is yet another benefit of this new real estate boom.
“I definitely see a flood of business growth coming to the region, which in turn will help to reverse the rough reputation of San Bernardino. There are great opportunities coming to the area and with time, things will turn around,” Hornyak said.
With no room to grow within the dense Southern California environment, urban expansion has set the scene for the Inland Empire’s time in the renewed commercial and business limelight.
