Desert Hot Springs’ approval of a new roughly 1 million-square-foot warehouse is the latest sign of the “logistics” industry heating up in the Coachella Valley.
Over the past two years, municipalities across the west half of the valley have approved around 4.9 million square foot of warehouse space. That’s about equivalent to 85 football fields. Most of the development has been clustered in an industrialized area north of Interstate 10, where Palm Springs and Desert Hot Springs meet.
Both cities changed their zoning code to allow warehouses to be built there, with the hope of gaining revenue through sales facilitated by the warehouses. The changes are drawing warehouses, though it remains to be seen how much of the promised tax revenue will materialize.
Palm Springs has approved two projects, which could bring three mega warehouse buildings to the area.
In addition to the recently approved Desert Hot Springs project, in 2022 the city approved a 653,000-square-foot warehouse for Amazon that opened in early 2026.
There’s also the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, which approved zoning changes that would allow a 1.2 million-square-foot warehouse complex to be built in the unincorporated area of Thousand Palms.
But that’s not all. There is one big pending project that could dramatically expand the amount of land set aside for warehouses.
The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians has proposed building a 2.9 million-square-foot warehouse and industrial site at the intersection of Highway 111 and I-10.
Because this project is set to be built on tribal land, the city of Palm Springs cannot block it. A community meeting on the proposal was delayed in May to give the developer more time to answer questions from the concerned residents. No new date has been set.
Altogether, the projects have the potential to change more than just the landscape of the Coachella Valley.
The Amazon facility in Desert Hot Springs is the only one to open so far, but the approved projects plus the pending tribal industrial park could bring a total of 8.5 million square feet of large logistics facilities to the western Coachella Valley.
And that doesn’t include all of the smaller warehouses and industrial parks used by restaurants and other logistics vendors.
The new industry could bring hundreds of jobs and productivity to the region. Still, some residents worry about air pollution from increased traffic as well as obstructed mountain views.
The timeline for some of the projects remains unclear. Developers frequently gain approval from cities for warehouses before they have tenants for them, which means construction sometimes doesn’t start for years — or ever.
The Desert Sun will be following these developments as they continue.
Warehouses boom across Inland Empire
While the Coachella Valley is experiencing its own rapid buildout of warehouses, the Inland Empire has seen even more.
Since 2023, governments in the region have approved over 55 million square feet of warehouse space, according to a report by a collection of conservancy groups. The figure does not include the Coachella Valley.
The report states that over 15 years’ worth of warehouse construction has already been approved, with 10 additional years pending review. That figure is based on the average annual rate of warehouse construction in Southern California, which is about 1,092 acres per year, according to the report.
“The pattern is clear: we are prioritizing housing goods more than people while ignoring the harm that this causes,” the report’s executive summary states. “Compounding this harm, warehouse-related jobs are vulnerable due to automation and trade volatility, undermining claims of lasting economic benefits.”
The report went on to say that warehouse expansion reflected short-term thinking, which would lead to lasting consequences.
However, in the Coachella Valley, the warehouse buildout has mostly been centralized in one location, unlike in the Inland Empire.
Timeline: Major new warehouses in Coachella Valley
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: See how many new mega-warehouses could come to Palm Springs area
Reporting by Sam Morgen, Palm Springs Desert Sun / Palm Springs Desert Sun
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Sam Morgen, Palm Springs Desert Sun | USA TODAY Network
