Alright, so this video is all about what's going on and what's changing here in the city of Menifee, California here in 2024. So I had a chance to go to the city managers meeting and hear directly from the city manager, from the city of Menifee, and she laid out the city's plan over the next 12 months. She talked about all the new infrastructure coming in, all the new developments and new housing tracks and new industrial stuff, and laid out all the new changes that they plan over the next 12 months. So I thought it was really good information. I'm going to give you guys the highlights and let you know what's going on so you can stay on top of it. So let's go ahead and get into it.

Hey guys. Hey again, my name is Justin Short. I'm a realtor and team leader for the short real estate team here at Keller Williams here in Temecula, California, in Murrieta California. And this video is all about the city of Menifee. So like I mentioned, I went to the city managers meeting and I had a chance to hear from all the city managers from the local cities. And I wanted to make a video for the city of Menefee for you guys and give you guys some highlights of what's going on and what's changing over the next 12 months. I thought it was a lot of really good information that the meeting is a little bit dry, so hopefully it's helpful for me to give you guys the highlights, let you know what's going on. And I think it's a lot of good information. I think a lot of these things are items that people that live here locally don't actually know.

And as a realtor it's really good for me to know and hopefully some good stuff I can share with you guys. But before I get into all the info, if you're liking real estate videos like this, do me a favor, please hit like please hit subscribe. So obviously it helps me, it helps my channel, obviously we're trying to continue to grow it. And then if you guys have any real estate questions, of course I'd love to hear from you so you can feel free. You can give me a call, a text, an email. You can see my information here either down below the video or here at the end. That's my personal cell phone. So I would love to hear from you Again, I have people that reach out all the time and happy to answer any questions or of course my cell and my team would love to help you out with your home search as well.

So I guess we'll get into all the info. So the first thing that they talked about was just some general highlights about the city of EE and some general stats, and then we'll talk about some of the infrastructure and development that's coming in soon. And some of the stats I thought were a little bit surprising. So general population. So the population for the city of Menifee is now up to 119,000 people and it's such a growing city and that's really what Menifee has been about over the last decade, and that's what a lot of the presentation was about is just growth, growth, growth, more and more people, more community, more infrastructure, et cetera. Just six years ago, the population was only 69,000. So the population has almost doubled in the last six years, which is super, super fast. And that really just kind of highlights exactly what's been going on over the last decade.

They're projecting the population to go up to 126,000 by the end of this year. So that's going to continue to grow. The average household income for the city of Menefee has grown a lot. It's now up to $112,000 per year. So that continues to go up each year as well. And when we're talking about most, I'm a realtor, right? So we talk about a lot of housing and house prices and affordability, et cetera. But one thing that they talked about was the just kind of retail space and shopping space and all that industrial space, all that other types of other parts of real estate. And what was surprising to me is that their vacancy rate for their retail shopping centers is it's only 1.4%. So that means it's almost 99% full as far as leased out. Their office space is 99.5% full, so there's only a 0.5% vacancy and all the industrial space is actually leased out.

There's nothing available. So that makes it the lowest amount of vacancy in Southwest Riverside County. And so their statement as a city was like, Hey, obviously our area's in demand, it's basically sold out from a commercial standpoint. So what that means, if everything that we have is in demand and it's sold out that this is the biggest opportunity zone in Riverside County going forward. So they're going to continue to build the infrastructure for that on the commercial side of things. But I thought it was interesting, honestly, that was surprising to me as an agent and someone that lives here locally, that's not what I expected for sure. They also mentioned there was over the last year, there's been over 3,500 real estate transactions in the city of Menefee, which is the highest in southwest Riverside County. So that takes into account the new builds as well.

But the city has grown so much. There's more real estate transactions in Menefee than any other of the cities here in southwest Riverside County. And also Menifee has become one of the safest cities in California as well. It's now one of the top 15% safest cities in the state. So that's something that they were really proud of as well. Alright, so the next portion of their presentation was all about the coming Soon development and all the new projects the city has going on. So they talked about there's actually 25 residential housing tracks that are currently in process that becomes over, it's 11,000 units that are currently going through the entitlement process and permitting process, et cetera. And they actually expect to build over 2200 homes just in the next two years. So that's one of the reasons those population numbers are going to continue to go up is they have all these homes that are in the funnel that are getting ready to be built and will be built very, very soon with that growth.

Menifee is now the fifth fastest growing city in California, and then over the last decade, they're actually the third fastest growing city in California. So I mean, you could see I mentioned the population numbers, you can see the amount of people that are moving there. I have more and more clients that are buying homes there. It's more affordable than Temecula and Marietta, which is going to be a big driver. There's also more new builds there than Temecula and Myta have, so that's going to be another big driver. But just the amount of growth that's going on there is it's incredible. Continues to grow and grow and it's hard to see it stopping anytime soon because there's still a lot of vacant land there where they can still build. They also talked a little bit about the industrial side of things. So there's over 16 million square feet of industrial buildings that are currently either under construction or in the pipeline.

So that's in the entitlement process, in the permit process. And those are five main projects. They're each basically the smallest of which is about 130,000 square feet. So those are massive, massive buildings. And the biggest of which goes up to 750,000 square feet. So big, huge, massive industrial buildings that they're building. And they have to build them because they're all leased and they're all leased out, they're all full, all the existing buildings at leased. They also have a lot of commercial construction that is coming. So there's over 1.3 million square feet in commercial construction that's either currently in construction or again in that entitlement and permitting process as well. And then there's a handful of other big construction projects that the city is involved in as well. So there's the new Menifee Justice Center. So that's currently under construction, basically that's going to be nine courtrooms for civil and family law.

That's a 95 million project that's currently under construction. I think they're hoping to have that open by the end of the year. So that's been in process now for the last year, year and a half or so. And also there's a couple of big projects going on at the junior college. So Mount San Junior College, they are currently building a STEM building and they're constructing their football stadium and their kinesiology center there at the college. So that's under construction. The city's involved in that. And the city is actually, the city was pretty proud to say that they have five new hotels that are coming to the city as well. They're not massive, all five of them, only giving you 275 rooms together, but there are some new hotels coming to the city and I think really across the board, Southwest Riverside County, so which is that Temecula, myriad of Menifee area, there's just not enough hotels.

So anytime we can get new ones, it's going to be a good thing. I have a lot of clients that come from out of town and they don't have a ton of great options, so having some new hotels would be a good thing for sure. Alright, and then the city manager also talks a lot about the infrastructure and all the new infrastructure that the city of Menifee is putting into place. So they currently have 191 infrastructure projects that are slated to take place over the next five years. So that's a lot. Again, they're in growth mode, they're continuing to add people, continue to add roads, continue to expand roads, et cetera. The biggest of which are the Scott and Bundy Canyon Road widening that's going on. So Scott Road is a main off ramp off of the two 15 freeway, which runs through Menifee, and they are currently expanding that road where Scott Road and Bundy Canyon meet to go up to four lanes each.

So that's a big expansion. A lot of people use that road to cut from Wildomar where the 15 freeway is to Menifee where the two 15 freeway is. So it's a high traffic area. Currently it's two roads, it's only two lanes. So to go from two lanes to four lanes each way, that's a big deal. I've been stuck on traffic there a lot of times. So that's a really big thing. There have 33 projects that are going through their pavement management system, so that's a 34 million project. So that's like resurfacing, widening the roads, et cetera. So they're just trying to show all the money that the city's putting into all their infrastructure and they have some big stuff going off the freeway as well. So there's the Holland Road Overpass, that's a big project that's connecting Holland Road from the east side of the freeway to the west side of the freeway.

So putting a bridge over the freeway, that's a $38 million project. In addition to that, there's the Gari Road interchange, so that's adding an off ramp right into the middle of town. So obviously it makes it easier to access to your home or shopping centers or whatnot. But another off ramp off the freeway, that's a $70 million project. So that's another big money they're doing where the McCall interchanges. So McCall is an off ramp off the two 15 freeway. So they're redoing that interchange, I believe they're going to widen it and make it more of a seamless process, kind of rework the roads a little bit. And then they're redoing the bridge at the Bradley Bridge or adding, they're adding the Bradley Bridge. So they're adding a bridge that'll connect Bradley for it to go through to basically make it a longer, more accessible road, some big projects they have going on.

And then the next thing that they talked about was all about their parks and recs division. They're now City of Menifee is now up to 44 parks within the city limits. So that's over 230 acres altogether, which is a ton. They've added a lot over the last five, six years. The biggest of which is one of the newer ones, which is the Gale Webb kids are number one Sports Action Park. So that actually has the largest pump track in all of Southern California. So that's a big massive park. And there's actually four new parks that they've added between last year and this year. So there's Remington Park, Underwood Park Quartz, ranch Park, and Banner Park. So they're continuing to add more, which they say is their goal. So the next section that they talked about in their presentation was just all about public safety and really the biggest thing that, the biggest highlight for them was the fact that City of Menifee is now in the top 15% of safest cities inside the state of California.

So that was a big thing. That was definitely not the reputation that the city had a few years ago, 10 years ago, whatever it was. But things have definitely changed, and as the city has grown, it has gotten safer and safer. So they were really proud about that. That is a big thing locally for the city of Temecula, city of Murrieta, to be considered such a safe area. So the city of Menifee is really trying to have that same reputation. They feel like a lot of the reason for that is because they opened up their own police department just a few years ago. So in 2020, Menifee opened their Menifee PD, they have grown that, and so now they're actually up to 93 police officers within their police force. So it's grown a lot, which is obviously a good thing. And it's grown so fast.

They actually reached, when they opened the department and had their projected numbers, they reached their five year projection goal within three years. So they really exceeded all of their expectations, has really grown really, really fast. They have some new technology that they've added to go along with that. So like a new commercial camera program, I think that scans your license plate for stolen cars. And if you pop as a stolen car, they can notify police really quickly. They have a new business academy that's tied into their pd and they even have what's called Project lifesaver, which is supposed to have something to do with their quick response based on location GPS tracking for missing persons as well as people with autism and dementia. So that's supposed to be an added benefit for people that live within the city. And even the Menifee fire department is growing as well.

They just added a new ladder truck, they added a new medical vehicle and they just broke ground on their newest fire station, which is fire station number five. Alright. Then the last thing that they had talked about was all about the education programs that are within the city of Menefee. So they give a little snapshot and they rattle off a couple stats, which I thought were kind of cool, but they did state that the city of Menefee is now the number one has the number one science academic program inside Riverside County. So I thought that was kind of cool. That was surprising. That's something that I knew also, they now have the number two charter school in all the Riverside County. So that's the Santa Rosa Charter School. So that school has grown a lot, super, super highly rated. It's grown a lot over the last decade.

And they're talking about the school districts a little bit. And it is kind of interesting. So Menefee has a few different school districts. So they have the Loma Linda School District, they have the Paris Unified Valley School District, and they have the Menifee Union School District. So the Menifee Union School District is the newest, but it's continuing to grow. So they now have 16 campuses that are part of the Menifee Union School District, plus they have one digital campus, and they are currently in the process of building one elementary school and one middle school. Those should both be up and running by 2028, so it's going to be a little bit of a process there. But those have been approved going through the building process. And they also talked about the junior college, which, so Santo Junior College is now, it's the fastest growing junior college in the state of California.

So it's continuing to grow and even if you just drive by the junior college, you can see it just continuing to expand, expand and getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So that's something that they're really proud about there as well as all the infrastructure that they're adding there at the junior college as well. And that's really a good summary of the meeting. Basically Menifee was really just talking about all about growth. They're continuing to add more homes, continue to add more businesses, continue to add more infrastructure as a real estate agent, and have clients that live there and driving through the area all the time. It feels like the area has really been built up so much and is much more condensed and they're really at the point where they're continuing to expand out. So they're continuing to expand north, continuing to expand east South a little bit, and they're going to take up more and more room and just continue to grow the nucleus of the city. So hopefully it's good information for you guys. If you guys have any questions, you can feel free to reach out. You can feel free, you can call, you can text, you can email me, and hopefully I will talk to you soon. Thanks.