San Bernardino County Supervisors Reapprove Bloomington Business Park, Placing Two Million Square Feet of Warehouses in a Residential Community

SAN BERNARDINO, CA -  The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors today voted 4-0-1 to reapprove the Bloomington Business Park Specific Plan, rezoning 213 acres of residential and rural land in Bloomington for industrial use. The action clears the way for three high-cube warehouses totaling more than 2.1 million square feet and a 9.55-acre truck and trailer parking facility in the heart of an established neighborhood.

"Today the Board of Supervisors told Bloomington families that their health is an acceptable loss," said Ana Gonzalez, Executive Director of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice. "A court already found this project was approved unlawfully. The County's own environmental report admits the air pollution harm cannot be fixed. The Board approved it again. Residents forced the removal of data center uses and secured a commitment that housing comes first, and those are real wins, but they are not enough. Ultimately, a project rewritten on the day of the vote, with a supervisor asking for more time, is a project that should have waited. Bloomington residents want a community where children can breathe clean air, not another truck corridor. CCAEJ stands with Bloomington. The fight against this irresponsible land use decision is not over. This community deserves to be heard, and it deserves to be protected."

Today's vote follows a 2024 San Bernardino County Superior Court ruling that halted the project and found the County's original environmental review failed to comply with state law. Rather than change course, the County recirculated portions of the Environmental Impact Report and brought the same project back for approval. The recirculated report itself concludes that the project's air quality impacts remain significant and unavoidable. The Board adopted a Statement of Overriding Considerations to approve the project anyway.

The project changed on the dais today. At the August 20, 2026 Planning Commission hearing, a data center was identified as a potential use of the site. Today, Fifth District Supervisor Joe Baca, Jr., who represents Bloomington, amended the project to remove data center uses and to require the housing build out to be completed before the first certificate of occupancy is issued. First District Supervisor Paul Cook abstained, stating he needed more time to review the project. These changes came from sustained pressure by Bloomington residents, and they confirm what the community has said from the start: this project was not ready for a final vote.

The Bloomington Business Park has already reshaped the community. More than 100 homes were demolished to make way for the development. Under a 2022 agreement with the project's original developer, Zimmerman Elementary School was set to close and its property transferred to make way for the warehouses. In August, the Colton Joint Unified School District approved a new agreement with the current owner, Bloomington Gateway Distribution Center, that keeps Zimmerman open under district ownership and provides the district $27 million in unrestricted funding. The agreement requires fencing, sound attenuation, traffic and dust management, and crossing guards during construction, moves truck bays away from the campus, and bars project truck traffic from Linden Avenue. The school stays, and Zimmerman students will now attend class next door to more than 2 million square feet of warehouses. Bloomington residents already live alongside the I-10 freeway, the Colton rail yard, and a growing concentration of logistics facilities that bring diesel truck traffic onto residential streets.

CCAEJ calls on the Board of Supervisors to adopt enforceable protections for communities already overburdened by industrial development, including meaningful buffers between industrial facilities and homes and schools and strict truck routing. CCAEJ also calls for full public accountability for every commitment attached to this project: the data center prohibition, the housing requirement, the Zimmerman Elementary student protections written into the conditions of approval, and the community benefit commitments approved today.