Cargo Plans Grow At Airport

Riverside Press Enterprise06/07/04

CARGO PLANS GROW AT AIRPORT Developer Hillwood seeks to rent a hangar and land at San Bernardino International.

NORTON: By PHIL PITCHFORD / The Press-EnterpriseThe master developer of the former Norton Air Force Base intends to start an air-cargo operation there later this summer in an arrangement that would pay local officials more than $300,000 in rent. Hillwood, the Texas company that has attracted Kohl’s, Mattel and Pep Boys as current or future warehouse tenants near what is now San Bernardino International Airport, is set to lease an airport hangar and about 9 surrounding acres for “air-freight and truck-distribution operations” starting Sept. 1, according to Don Rogers, interim executive director at the San Bernardino International Airport Authority. The lease is scheduled for approval at the authority’s board meeting on Wednesday. The terms of the proposed lease, which were made available late Monday, call for Hillwood to pay $337,623 in rent at the rate of $25,971 per month for 13 months. The hangar the company intends to rent has about 49,000 square feet of rentable space; the company also proposes to lease 9 acres of paved tarmac immediately adjacent to the hangar.Hillwood would spend about $500,000 in construction costs to prepare the hangar and surrounding area for use, Rogers said in a report to the airport authority’s board. John Magness, a Hillwood senior vice president, could not be reached for comment.Airport officials said last month that the Dallas-based company wants to build a 240,000-square-foot cargo-distribution facility just east of the airport’s existing terminal building. The airport said at that time that Hillwood hoped to bring as many as 10 cargo flights per day to the airport.The company already has extensive experience with air freight. It helped bring FedEx to the airport in 2002, when the company used San Bernardino International to deliver about $70 million worth of racing equipment for a CART race at California Speedway in Fontana.The company intends to transform the former base into AllianceCalifornia, a planned 9 million-square-foot industrial park and cargo center. The company previously developed AllianceTexas, a 15,000-acre cargo airport north of Fort Worth. FedEx operates a cargo hub at that airport.