The San Bernardino County Sentinel reported Rialto resident Brenda Parker saying, "Allowing warehouses to be built in residential neighborhoods would have an impact on our homes, our parks and our children."
Parker spoke at the January 28, 2025 city council meeting where, according to Citizen Portal, the council enacted an emergency 45-day moratorium on new warehouse approvals. The same night, the council upheld a resident appeal and denied a warehouse project proposed for Locust Avenue and West Coast Boulevard, right next to homes in North Rialto. It felt like a turning point. California has statewide logistics-facility standards under AB 98, which took effect on January 1, 2025. The law also exempts some projects already moving through Rialto's pipeline, so buyers near the industrial corridor can check whether a nearby project qualifies.
For a home near Rialto's warehouse zones, check both the distance to nearby facilities and the entitlement timeline for any pending project.
What Rialto's Moratorium Covered
Rialto's moratorium, adopted under emergency Ordinance 1697, was never meant to be permanent. It paused new warehouse approvals for 45 days, then IECN reported it was extended on February 25, 2025 through August 26, 2025. It also came with built-in gaps: projects already approved by the council or planning commission were untouched, anything more than 500 feet from a home, school, church, or park was untouched, and any warehouse or storage building under 100,000 square feet was exempt outright. Principal planner Daniel Casey described the pause as time for the city to review its own zoning rules and weigh how they lined up with the new state law.
That state law is Assembly Bill 98, and it's now the floor Rialto has to build on, not a substitute for local policy. The Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, which pushed hard for the moratorium, has said as much directly. Executive director Ana Gonzalez has argued the city has a responsibility to go beyond what AB 98 requires, not treat it as the finish line.
How AB 98 Applies Alongside Local Rules
AB 98, signed by Governor Newsom in September 2024, sets design standards for new or expanded logistics facilities anywhere within 900 feet of what the law calls a "sensitive receptor": a home, a school, a daycare, a public park or playground used by children, a nursing home or hospice, or a hospital. Rialto sits inside the law's defined Warehouse Concentration Region, along with Chino, Colton, Fontana, Jurupa Valley, Moreno Valley, Ontario, Perris, Rancho Cucamonga, Redlands, Riverside, and San Bernardino, a designation that gave these specific cities an earlier compliance deadline than the rest of the state for updating their truck-route planning.
For projects covered by AB 98 within that 900-foot radius, loading bays have to be set back hundreds of feet from the nearest home, sites must have landscaped buffers, truck idling is limited, and heavy trucks must be routed away from residential streets. On paper, it reads like the kind of protection Brenda Parker was asking for at that January meeting.
How the Cutoff Date Affects Project Coverage
AB 98 does not apply to logistics projects that had already started the local entitlement process before September 30, 2024, as long as construction begins within five years of getting approved. It also doesn't apply to any project that already had local approval before the law's own effective date of January 1, 2025.
For buyers, the key is to verify a nearby project's entitlement and approval timeline before assuming which standards apply.
Look at the city's own current projects list and you can see what that means in practice. A 664,859-square-foot warehouse proposed for the southwest corner of Locust Avenue and Lowell Street, inside the Rialto Airport Specific Plan, went before the city council for a public hearing on January 27, 2026. Its case file numbers, tied to a tentative parcel map application, date back to 2023, a full year before AB 98's cutoff. Whether that specific project ultimately falls under the new buffer standards or sails past them under the grandfather clause isn't something a buyer can assume either way just because the calendar now reads 2026. It has to be checked project by project.
Two Buyers, Two Buffers: Why Zoning Status Changes the Math
Even for projects that do fall under AB 98, the buffer isn't one fixed number. It depends on what the parcel was zoned before the application was filed.
| Site's zoning status | Minimum loading bay setback | Minimum landscape buffer |
|---|---|---|
| Already zoned industrial | 300 feet from the nearest sensitive receptor | 50 feet |
| Not zoned industrial, or needs a rezone | 500 feet from the nearest sensitive receptor | 100 feet |
That gap matters more in Rialto than it might elsewhere, because not every proposed warehouse site here started out zoned for industrial use. One pending application would redevelop a site on Foothill Boulevard near Larch Avenue, land currently designated Residential-High Density under the Foothill Boulevard Specific Plan, into an industrial building. If that project proceeds and falls under AB 98's standards, it lands in the wider 500-foot, 100-foot tier because it needs a rezone, not the tighter 300-foot tier that applies where the land was already zoned for this use. Two homes sitting the exact same distance from two different warehouses could end up with very different required buffers, purely based on a zoning designation that has nothing to do with the house itself.
Changes to AB 98 Under SB 415
AB 98 also isn't finished changing. On October 3, 2025, Governor Newsom signed Senate Bill 415, which rewrote several of the original bill's rougher edges. It softened the loading dock orientation requirement from facing the opposite side of the building away from homes to simply facing away from them, to the extent feasible. It clarified that a single dedicated truck lane counts as a separate truck entrance, even for projects with multiple buildings, instead of requiring one per building. It also expanded which access roads qualify and clarified what counts inside a buffer area, including parking and pedestrian walkways.
SB 415 amended several of AB 98's requirements. SB 415 is less than a year old, and even AB 98's own compliance deadlines are proving hard to hit: reporting from a February 2026 gathering of the Freight Communities Action Coalition in Moreno Valley found some Inland Empire cities, Rialto's neighbors in the same Warehouse Concentration Region, were still catching up on the truck-route mapping the law was supposed to have in place by January 1, 2026.
What to Actually Ask Before You Write an Offer
If a home you're considering sits within a quarter mile of Rialto's industrial corridor, here's what actually tells you something:
- Pull up the city's current projects list and check for anything pending within 900 feet of the address, not just what's already built.
- Ask when that project's application was originally filed. Case numbers starting with 2023 or earlier are a signal, not a guarantee, that it may predate the cutoff.
- Ask whether the parcel was zoned industrial before the application, or whether it required a rezone; for projects covered by AB 98, that determines which buffer tier applies.
- Ask whether the buffer wall or landscaped berm has actually been built yet, since a required buffer on paper and a finished buffer on the ground are not the same thing during the months a project is under construction.
- Check the council and appeal history for a project, including the Locust Avenue and West Coast Boulevard project and the separate Vineyard Avenue Warehouse Project; review the record for any vote and its stated reasons.
If You're Selling Near the Corridor
For sellers, a practical step is to know the exemption status of anything pending nearby and be prepared to discuss it with prospective buyers. CCAEJ has been pushing Rialto to adopt a formal "good neighbor policy," the kind of local agreement that goes beyond AB 98's floor with commitments like solar requirements or direct community benefit terms. If a property near yours already has one of those negotiated, that's worth mentioning. If it doesn't, sellers can still be prepared to answer questions about nearby projects using the information available.
FAQ
Does AB 98 apply to warehouses that are already built near my home? No. The law's standards apply to qualifying new or expanded logistics developments, subject to the cutoff exemptions described above; they do not apply retroactively to existing operating facilities.
What exactly counts as a "sensitive receptor" under the law? Homes, schools from preschool through 12th grade, daycares, publicly owned parks and playgrounds used by children, nursing homes and hospices, and hospitals.
Is Rialto's warehouse moratorium still in effect? No. Ordinance 1697 expired on August 26, 2025. AB 98 and its amendment, SB 415, are now the operative rules for new projects, alongside whatever the city adopts locally on top of them.
How do I find out if a specific project predates the cutoff? Start with the city's current projects page, then look at the case file numbers and filing dates on any pending application. A planner or land use attorney can confirm the exact entitlement timeline for a specific parcel.
Rialto's industrial corridor isn't going away, and neither is the law meant to manage how close it can grow to the next subdivision. What changes house by house is whether that law actually reaches the project in question. That's not a question a listing sheet answers. If you're weighing a home near Rialto's warehouse zones, or thinking about selling one, Salem Realty Group can walk through the pending projects and zoning history around a specific address before you make a decision. Talk with Jose to request a free consultation and discuss the questions that matter most for your move.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
