DHL Picks March Base as New Hub
Shipping giant DHL has picked March Air Reserve base in Riverside County to be its new cargo hub in Southern California, in what admirers and opponents alike characterized as a very good deal for DHL.
For backers of the facility, DHL’s announcement was a relief after a decade of efforts to bring private, profit-making businesses to the joint-powers base, and stiff competition from nearby Ontario and San Bernardino International airports.
“I’m beyond elated,” said Phil Rizzo, who served as commander of the Air Force base for many years and who has led efforts to redevelop March since it was downsized in 1996. The reserve base now has a dual public-private mission to bring in commercial revenue to help offset operating costs for the Department of Defense.
The March Joint Powers Commission is expected to approve the deal Wednesday. One commissioner, Riverside County Supervisor Bob Buster, expressed some doubts.
“I still hope we can get some agreement from DHL to both minimize any noise and overflight over residential areas in the Riverside area during nighttime hours,” he said. “That needs to be provided for and it hasn’t been.”
The company will pay about 6 cents per square foot in rent for its facility to the Joint Powers Authority, or about $23,000 a year, Rizzo said.
Normal rents for Southern California airport cargo space run between 50 and 60 cents per square foot, industry experts said. DHL said it had a 15-year lease agreement for $20 million. The airport will also waive landing and fuel loading fees on most flights for three years.
“It’s ... a sweetheart deal,” said Guy Fox, chairman of the Los Angeles Air Cargo Assn. “When you have a new entity such as March, and they’re trying to attain identity as a commercial airport ... you know they’re going to do whatever they can to obtain a platform of business.”
Still, Fox said, it was a deal that March officials as well as DHL executives were smart to make, because other businesses would follow their lead.
“It’s very competitive. You have nothing there, and you’re trying to have a platform on which to build,” Fox said. “If you get somebody who is a name player, then other businesses say, ‘These people are in there, so they must have something good.’ ”
Opponents called it a raw deal for taxpayers, especially those living near the airport.
“It’s all about money. It’s all about the subsidies that March can offer DHL,” said community activist Catherine Barrett-Fischer, who lives two miles from the airport and heads one of two groups that have sued to overturn approvals of the cargo hub.
She said that in addition to the breaks on fees, the military would be paying for half the upkeep of the runway, flight control tower and other infrastructure.
The airport is still a major military transport facility.
“This is a big-money deal, because March is an Air Reserve base, so it’s going to be a joint-use facility,” Barrett-Fischer said.
“What that means is we the public will be paying for DHL to fly around in the middle of the night waking us up at night and poisoning us.”
In their lawsuit, the groups allege that the base did not conduct proper environmental studies of noise and air pollution impacts, ignored possible contamination of nearby drinking water supplies and broke a promise to abide by a nighttime curfew on flights, according to attorney Barrington Daltrey.
Both Rizzo and DHL spokesman Jonathan Baker said they would not comment on litigation but said they hoped to have positive working relationships with adjoining communities.
Initially there will be a maximum of eight commercial flights day or night out of the airport, said Baker.
There will also be 18 truck trips in and out of the 380,000-square-foot sorting warehouse each day, serving California, southern Nevada and Arizona.
Baker said the facility will generate 300 construction jobs; 250 initial warehouse jobs; $65 million worth of capital improvements and payroll taxes; and utility fees and other benefits totaling nearly $10 million annually.
He said DHL selected March because of the financial package, easy access to freeways and its ability to have the hub open by next autumn.
The German-based company is undertaking a $1.2-billion expansion in the U.S.
Buster expressed concern about the possibility of unanticipated costs if military operations at March were discontinued as part of continued base closures.
Although the Joint Powers Authority won’t make money from the deal for many years because of heavy taxpayer investment, Buster and others said they hope the facility would lead to higher-paying jobs nearby.
Times staff writers Seema Mehta and Jennifer Oldham contributed to this report.
