FAA to Hear Plans for Aerospace Business Park

The first new master-planned business park to be designed for the aerospace industry and which includes a private airport, will be the focus of a public hearing by the Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday in the Moreno Valley High School gymnasium.

Plans for the proposed Moreno International Trade Center also have been submitted for public review to the City of Moreno Valley. It is anticipated that the application process will take from 12 to 18 months.

The project of Benzeevi Cohen Corp. of Los Angeles, will cover four of the 46 square miles of the city of Moreno Valley, 10 miles east of Riverside.

The center will occupy about 2,600 acres, of which 1,100 acres are targeted for a business park for firms dealing in international trade, aerospace support businesses and for corporate headquarters; 900 acres will be devoted to aerospace firms specializing in design, engineering and manufacturing of aircraft and retrofitting, and 500 acres for a private runway.

Estimated cost of the 10-to 20-year development is $1 billion at build-out. It is expected to provide employment potential for 30,000 to 50,000 people in Riverside County.

The site is bordered on the east by a range of hills known as the Badlands and on the west by Mount Russell. The parcel occupies its own “mini-valley” within Moreno Valley, according to the developer.

The rationale of Iddo Benzeevi, president of the development firm,and David Cohen, executive vice president, is that the population of the Inland Empire has been booming and that commerce and industry in that area is only now beginning to follow that growth pattern.

“I think one could liken it to Orange County in the 1960s and the early 1970s,” Cohen said.

“Aerospace firms increasingly find themselves competing for runway access with a growing number of scheduled passengers airliners and an increasing general aviation population. All that has led to some major firms to consider abandoning Southern California completely.”

The Moreno International Trade Center would include as many as six major sites for aerospace firms, all with immediate access to a private 10,000-foot runway that would be used by the firms within the center and operated as a private facility. It would not serve commercial passenger flights.

The development team for the Moreno International Trade Center includes Benzeevi Cohen and Bechtel Civil Inc. In addition, Turrini & Brink is responsible for land-use planning of the complex.