FEATURE ARTICLE, APRIL 2008

RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA: OFFICE RUNS THROUGH IT

Increasingly, the people’s choice is to live closer to their workplaces. In Riverside, California, the reverse equation is quite productively true — service industries, entrepreneurs and corporations have been locating or relocating their headquarters closer to where their workforce lives. In Southern California in the past decade, that more and more means the high-growth Inland Empire and Riverside, the market’s most populous city.

“In the last 5 years, Riverside has seen some of the highest employment, wage and salary growth in the nation, as well as an increased demand for high-end Class A office,” says Tricia Hinckley, economic development manager for the city. “As a result, nearly 1.5 million square feet of new, high-profile office space has been completed in Riverside in the last 18 months. There is also an additional 900,000 square feet of Class A product, much of it speculative, underway.”

When complete in March 2009, Moshe Silagi’s 250,000-square-foot, 10-story, Class A Regency Tower will be Riverside’s tallest structure downtown. Located at the corner of Tenth and Orange streets, the office tower is part of the “Riverside Renaissance,” the city’s $1.8 billion initiative to reshape Riverside’s core. Also in construction in the city of nearly 300,000 people is the final phase of Turner Riverwalk, which is Turner Development’s premier build-to-suit business community and part of its 1 million-square-foot master-planned development. The 73-acre site features 500,000 square feet of Class A office space, including twin 100,000-square-foot, four-story towers.

“Population and employment growth continue to be driving factors in the demand for office space in Riverside,” says Hinckley. The city has partnered with the county and University of California, Riverside, to boost its high-tech industry sector with the development of University Research Park, a 56-acre synergistic business campus. Also, to further promote business development and create a more technology-friendly environment, Riverside implemented free Wi-Fi access throughout its 86-square-mile radius, the largest free Wi-Fi network to date, according to Hinckley.

— Brian A. Lee

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