An Orange County commercial real estate company is dipping into neighboring Riverside County to build a massive industrial campus.
Newport Beach-based Western Realco told the Business Journal that it has received entitlements to develop a five-building, 710,000-square-foot industrial park on 49.31 acres off Green River Drive in Corona, the first exit off the Riverside (91) Freeway after leaving Orange County into Riverside County.
Western Realco bought the property in late 2019 and spent about five years gaining the necessary entitlements.
Construction would start later this year, Western Realco Principal Jeremy Mape told the Business Journal.
“Many municipalities in OC & LA have curbed new industrial development in fear of more trucks on the streets,” Mape said in an email. “While logistics is a key driver to Southern California, manufacturing and R&D, via onshoring, is making a strong comeback. If these cities continue to support the office and industrial to housing boom, they will lose facilities for their residents to work.
“And if you look at the project impacts of the CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) studies, the industrial buildings are typically much less impactful to the surrounding communities than high density housing,” Mape continued.
Mape said Green River Ranch Business Park, as the industrial campus will be called, would feature five pads that could be sold to users or leased as build-to-suit buildings.
Brokers at JLL were hired to market the property, which could come online by 2027.
“We see these projects as job creators,” Mape said, adding there is always a need for industrial development in and around Orange County.
Wade Tift, a managing director at JLL’s office in Irvine, said the current trend of industrial users in Orange County, be it as a tenant or owner-user, has been a manufacturer in one of three industries: aerospace and defense, household goods, and toys.
Mape and Tift said Green River Ranch Business Park was designed to attract companies to establish their corporate headquarters there.
Western Realco was founded by Vance Mape in 1972 and has since developed more than 150 buildings and 25 million square feet. Vance Mape died in 2023, with Jeremy Mape and Gary Edwards now serving as principals.
The company’s largest Orange County project is the 44-acre development of the Beckman Coulter site in 2019, which covers 976,000 square feet across five buildings.
Inland Empire and OC Industrial Markets
The Inland Empire’s industrial market, located northeast of Orange County, started 2025 in positive territory, according to CBRE. The real estate advisory firm said vacancy for industrial space in Riverside and San Bernardino counties decreased last quarter, for the first time since July-to-September 2022.
Overall vacancy was at 6.6% through the first three months of the year, per CBRE.
Industrial development, however, was down for the first quarter of 2025, with 9.5 million square feet of space under construction.
