Kirby S. Hays
President and CEO
Hal Hays Construction Inc.
As California’s second-largest metropolitan area and the nation’s 12th largest, Riverside County’s story right now is one of growth, Hays says.
“The Riverside-San Bernardino metro added nearly 40,000 people between 2023 and 2024, making it one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country. Meanwhile, LA County lost 60,000 to 70,000 residents during that same period,” he says. “People are moving inland because they can really afford to live here, and all that growth has to be supported with infrastructure.”
Total starts are expected to fall 6% this year, according to Dodge Data & Analytics, with residential projects down 5% and non-residential projects down 27%. Nonbuilding starts are expected to rise 26% on the strength of electric service starts, which are expected to accelerate 87% this year.
“The work here is more driven by infrastructure and logistics, compared to the coastal focus on adaptive reuse and high-rise buildings,” Hays says, adding that utility infrastructure is one of three sectors driving the market right now.
“Riverside County consistently ranks among the top counties in California,” he says. “This growth has to be supported, and that’s where the line of work comes from: water, power, gas and telecommunications systems have to keep pace.”
The other two sectors showing strength are transport and warehouse/logistics.
“The history of the warehouse is one that everyone knows. More than 30% of all waterborne trade entering the US passes through the ports of LA and Long Beach, and most of that cargo goes through warehouses in the Inland Empire before reaching the rest of the country,” he says. “There are over 4,000 warehouses covering almost 40 square miles in this region.”
But communities are pushing back more strongly on new approvals through local moratoriums and state legislation like AB 98, which sets new setback requirements for logistics facilities near residential areas, Hays adds.
Meanwhile, labor remains an issue for Riverside businesses.
“The skilled trades workforce is as tight as I’ve ever seen it in my career. The cost of living here is lower than on the coast, but so is compensation, and that creates a real challenge to attract quality workers,” he says. “There’s more emphasis right now on finding and retaining qualified, self-performing traders than at any other time I can remember.”
Hays adds that as a self-executing heavy civil contractor, Hal Hays Construction feels this shortage daily.
But if there’s one thing that has highlighted resource constraints across the area, it’s the extensive recovery effort from LA’s wildfires.
“During the initial emergency response for the Eaton Fire and Palisades, it felt like every dump truck and earthmoving operator available in the region was pulled west,” he says. “This kind of sudden depletion of manpower and equipment has real consequences for projects that are already underway here. It was temporary, but it exposed how scarce resources are.”
On the materials side, oil price volatility stemming from the Iran conflict is pushing up asphalt prices, causing suppliers to expire quotes faster than ever, adding a level of uncertainty to the estimate that didn’t exist just a year ago, Hays says.
“The rates have had some impact, but we try to negotiate them, and most of our projects are shorter than several years, so our exposure is limited,” he says.
One of the area’s flagship projects is the 200-acre, $172 million Ontario Sports Empire development anchored by ONT Field, which is the new 6,500-seat stadium for the Dodgers’ Single-A affiliate Ontario Tower Buzzers. While the stadium opened in March, the full complex will include eight baseball and softball diamonds and a community sports complex that will open later this year, making it the largest sports complex of its kind in Southern California.
As for the regional outlook over the next 12-18 months, Hays’ concerns are mostly external, from federal policy uncertainty to the California governor’s race.
“A trend I’m seeing in public works [is that] “Project owners are becoming more litigious, quicker to pull the trigger on terminations and more willing to litigate,” he says, noting that this type of environment increases costs across the board. Ultimately, those costs will be passed on to ratepayers and ratepayers, Hays says.
“The outlook is still solid. I keep coming back to the numbers,” he continues. “The Inland Empire grows while coastal California stagnates or shrinks. The Inland Empire has available land, lower costs and continued population growth. People need places to live, roads to drive, water to drink, energy to light. That’s our job.”
