Victor Valley, CA, is Making the Right Moves

Eric Reed

Beyond the glitz and glamor of Hollywood is a part of the Mojave Desert with a business sector thriving not from film or art, but something that proves just as fruitful to its own economy — transportation and warehousing. Don’t think that industry sounds quite as intriguing as Hollywood’s? Think again.

In Victor Valley, CA, the logistics and distribution sector is anchored by the Southern California Logistics Airport (SCLA) in Victorville, a 2,200-acre aviation and air cargo facility adjacent to the Southern California Logistics Center (SCLC), both of which frame the growing business segment.

“SCLA serves as the economic engine driving the local economy,” says Sue Jones, Victorville public information officer.

Unlike scheduled passenger service airports, SCLA provides a space for experimental aircraft design, flight testing, maintenance, painting and recycling, serving as a major player in the aviation transportation space. Major tenants at SCLA include Boeing AOG, which maintains a large maintenance, repair and modification operation at the airport.

The former George Air Force Base has some Hollywood connections of its own. SCLA has served as a filming site for a variety of films and television productions, including “The Hulk,” “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” and “Oceans Eleven.”

At the adjacent off-airport industrial park, the logistics center caters to manufacturing, warehousing and industrial businesses with facilities than range from 120,000 to 1 million square feet. Here, businesses like Keurig Dr Pepper, Newell Rubbermaid, Mars and Amazon put Victorville on the map as a logistics hub.

New Developments

While the sector is already a clear mainstay of the Victor Valley’s economy, it doesn’t show signs of stopping its sharp upward growth trajectory.

In Hesperia, a warehouse and distribution center for upholstery and wood furniture resource Modway opened as Phase I of a larger development, the Hesperia Commerce Center One project, which features three 1 million-square-foot warehouse buildings.

The Modway warehouse, which opened in 2022, is the first of these three to finish construction, says April Antonio, City of Hesperia administration analyst for economic development. The second warehouse is currently under construction.

At SCLA, growth is anticipated both in terms of infrastructure improvements and development of additional warehouse facilities on the western edge of the airport boundary, along with taxiways and aircraft parking to meet demand.

Meanwhile, more warehouse facilities are popping up across the Victor Valley, including the proposed 1 million-square-foot warehouse distribution building north of the Foxborough Industrial Park in Victorville that would complement existing industrial development. The proposed facility would operate as a cross-dock warehouse with 120 loading docks within the truck court on the north side of the building and 116 loading docks within the truck court on the south side of the building.

The Big Picture

For those living in Victor Valley, the burgeoning logistics sector offers a major benefit — jobs that are close to home.

“A lot of people up here drive down the hill to go to work (in or around LA), because our cost of living is lower. With the addition of warehousing, it keeps jobs up here in the High Dessert and keeps people from driving so far for work,” says Antonio, in reference to the Hesperia Commerce Center One project. Likewise, SCLA alone is home to roughly 3,400 jobs, making it the largest employment center in the Victorville community.

Developments like these also put the Victor Valley at the forefront of a sector that’s grown 3.4% per year on average between 2017 and 2022 in the U.S., according to IBISWorld. And, as SCLA’s Jones says of the airport hosting such a wide variety of businesses, the sector “brings new jobs and investments to Victorville that are giving a boost to the entire region.”