The Rise of Riverside’s Innovation District
Located in the heart of the Inland Empire, Riverside is a vibrant college town that offers a wide array of lively restaurants, eclectic music venues, local craft breweries, indie shops, and quaint coffee houses, and more. Riverside boasts an astounding 24 nationally registered historic sites and more than 100 city landmarks that encapsulate the city’s rich and remarkable history.
Sitting a mere sixty miles east of Los Angeles, Riverside is a city known for its citrus industry, and has grown to be renowned as the city of arts and innovation. Visitors and residents alike enjoy all the amenities that make a college town noteworthy. From downtown museums and performing arts centers to the world-famous Mission Inn Hotel and Spa, the city is the perfect blend of small-town friendliness and big-city fun.
Riverside is flourishing and growing at a steady and exciting pace. As of the 2020 census, Riverside had a population of 314,998. As a college town and affordable Southern California market with a wide variety of social and business advantages, Riverside will only continue to grow. At Stance, we are here to help it grow. To us, Riverside is more than just a place… it’s home!
Let’s take a look at Riverside’s Innovation District.
What is an Innovation District?
According to the Brookings Institute, an innovation district is defined as a “geographic area where leading-edge anchor institutions and companies cluster and connect with startups, business incubators, and accelerators. They are also physically compact, transit-accessible, and technically-wired and offer mixed-use housing, office, and retail.”
Innovation districts facilitate the creation and commercialization of new ideas and support metropolitan economies by growing jobs in ways that leverage their distinct economic attributes. These districts build on and revalue the intrinsic qualities of cities: proximity, density, authenticity, and vibrant places. Given the proximity of many districts to low-income neighborhoods and the large number of sub-baccalaureate jobs many provide, their intentional development can be a tool to help connect disadvantaged populations to employment and educational opportunities.
Innovation districts have the unique potential to spur productive, inclusive and sustainable economic development. At a time of sluggish growth, they provide a strong foundation for the creation and expansion of firms and jobs by helping companies, entrepreneurs, universities, researchers and investors—across sectors and disciplines—co-invent and co-produce new discoveries for the market. At a time of rising social inequality, they offer the prospect of expanding employment and educational opportunities for disadvantaged populations given that many districts are close to low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. And, at a time of inefficient land use, extensive sprawl and continued environmental degradation, they present the potential for denser residential and employment patterns, the leveraging of mass transit, and the repopulation of urban cores.
Riverside’s Innovation District
Entrepreneurship, employment, entertainment and housing, all in one place. This is the vision for Riverside’s Innovation District.
What if you aren’t an entrepreneur, does this still matter to you?
Absolutely! An innovation district not only connects cutting edge businesses with infrastructure and close-at-hand resources, it builds off of the character of historic and culturally rich neighborhoods, connects blue-collar workers to high-paying jobs, and contributes to the growth of affordable, eco-friendly public transportation. Existing community members will benefit from the diversification of housing options in their area, and the aim is to maintain affordable housing while creating opportunity for all Riversiders to participate meaningfully in our economy.
Riverside is the #4 destination for minority entrepreneurs, and the #1 destination for millennials in the entire country. Riverside's Innovation District will leverage the power of our growing population by providing education and technical training that is needed to create a bubble of green and clean air technology jobs, anchored by the California Air Resources Board.
Source: Official Riverside Website
Location
Riverside’s Innovation District consists of a 3-square-mile.
The district includes:
- Part of downtown Riverside
- An area along North Main Street
- An industrial area north of Third Street near the 60/91/215 freeway interchange
- The area with old packing houses east of downtown
- The Eastside neighborhood
- UC Riverside and the area where the California Air Resources Board is building a new facility
Numbers
- Population: Nearly 23,000
- Number of Businesses: 1,700
Four Institutions of Higher Education
- University of California, Riverside
- Riverside Community College
- California Baptist University
- La Sierra University
Entrepreneurship and Employment
Within the Riverside Innovation District, the plan includes running a hybrid electric bus on the University Avenue, close to UCR’s Center for Environmental Research and Technology also called the Innovation Corridor. The corridor will help Riverside to become a smart city in the future.
Buildings
Several vacant buildings within the Innovation District consist of old packing houses from the area’s citrus-growing days. Such structures often require extensive renovations before being occupied. The result, however, is an attractive building that can become an office, retail or live/work space, among other uses.
One such structure is the Sutherland Fruit Co. packing house at 3191 Mission Inn Ave., which is now Old Spaghetti Factory. Other former packing houses and empty lots in the district include:
- National Orange Co. Packing House
- Riverside Navel Growers Association
- Strachan Fruit Co.
- Packing House Business Center
Jobs, Dining and Entertainment Options
With four institutions of higher learning within city limits and several others nearby, Riverside is already preparing students for fulfilling jobs in the medical field, engineering, social justice and the arts. Our Innovation District will not only provide the types of jobs that we need to keep all of those graduates here, it will also provide training for and employment in quality technical careers that don't require a college degree.
Currently, Riverside’s 3-square-mile Innovation District is filled with a mix of vintage citrus packing houses, office buildings, educational institutions and residential areas. Given time, it will develop into a home for thousands of additional high-tech, high-paying jobs that will attract even more investment and also add to the quality of life for local residents.
Once the plan is fully realized, city administrators predict that the area’s diverse population will be able to live, work, go to school and play in an area that will be walkable and also have multiple transportation options.
How Stance Commercial Real Estate Can Help You
Navigating the commercial real estate market can be an intimidating task, especially in a fast-moving market such as Southern California. Any commercial real estate situation can change in the blink of an eye, leaving you to face challenges that you never anticipated. And to make a sale that meets your pricing and timeline goals, there are even more factors to keep in mind.
Stance CRE can be a great resource regardless of which type of investor you are. We have been adding value to investment decisions right here in Riverside for years. We are not just market experts, we are your neighbors! We are a local business with local interests.
In the right market, both active and passive options have the potential to generate steady cash-flow and return on investment. At Stance Commercial Real Estate, we live and breathe Riverside culture. We are not only working in the community, we live here… we love it and we want to help you succeed in it!
Call us today at (909) 772-1212 and let us help you decide which type of role is best for you!
