McDonald’s was born in San Bernardino, opening as a walk-up hamburger stand in 1948 at 1396 N. E St. The revolutionary concept of a limited menu and lightning-fast service changed the way the world eats.
(That ur-McDonald’s was torn down in 1972 for an office building. It’s now home to the Historic Original McDonald’s Museum, a shrine to the Golden Arches.)
Today, McDonald’s wants to build another restaurant in San Bernardino. It would occupy a corner at 116 W. Baseline St., roughly six blocks from the site of the original McDonald’s.
San Bernardino has eight McDonald’s restaurants, which means a Big Mac isn’t hard to come by. Eight McDonald’s in a city of 220,000, though, is slightly less than the national average per capita. Riverside, for what it’s worth, has 13.
Even in the birthplace of fast food, a McDonald’s is not a slam dunk.
City leaders said no.
“I think we can do better for San Bernardino,” Sandra Ibarra, a member of the City Council, said at the June 17 council meeting.
McDonald’s was rejected that night by the City Council and, two months earlier, by the Planning Commission.
Residents who spoke at either or both meetings were almost uniformly against another McDonald’s.
They said the food is unhealthy, that drive-thrus cause pollution, that the jobs are few due to automation, that the city won’t benefit economically, that residents would prefer mixed-use housing.
One McDonald’s won’t make or break San Bernardino. But the arguments are fascinating in what they reveal about San Bernardino in 2026 and how the city can seem to be stuck in place.
You have the idealists who dream of a vibrant city with walkable neighborhoods, local entrepreneurs and higher aspirations.
Then you have the realists. They wonder why any business would invest in San Bernardino if leaders struggle to say yes, especially to a successful company willing to invest in a blighted corner.
As a reminder, San Bernardino is often said to be the poorest city of its size in California. Nearly 1 in 5 residents lives below the poverty line of $15,940 per year. The median household income in the city is $67,000, well below the San Bernardino County median of $88,000.
The new McDonald’s would go up on Baseline Street at Sierra Way. The site has two vacant buildings, which would be demolished. The last tenants were a discount store and a check cashing business. They closed in 2019.
In the intervening seven years, McDonald’s is the first to propose a use for the property.
Regardless, when planning commissioners weighed the proposal on April 14, the vote was 6-3 in opposition. A drive-thru needs a conditional use permit, which the commission declined to provide.
McDonald’s appealed the decision to the City Council and didn’t fare much better. Some 15 people spoke and all were opposed.
“What’s before you tonight is bigger than fast food,” speaker Ruben Mendoza argued that night. “It’s about whether our land-use decisions reflect the kind of city we’re committed to building.”
Representing McDonald’s, Zeshaan Younus said he’d been working with the Planning Department on the project for two years.
Pause a moment to absorb that news. In San Bernardino, the process to consider a McDonald’s, hardly an unknown quantity, takes two years — all to get a no.
“The Planning Commission’s subtext on the denial was that this site should be retained for mixed-use or residential development,” Younus told the council. But he said the site is less than one acre, which in his experience is too small for a residential or mixed-use project to pencil out.
He said opponents’ “passion” was commendable but that they weren’t being realistic.
“Saying no to something that is real and tangible and here, in favor of something that is amorphic and doesn’t currently exist, I would suggest, is an irresponsible real-estate perspective for a city to have,” Younus said.
Some council members were unmoved.
“If this property is going to be vacant for a little longer, then it will be vacant for a little longer,” Ibarra said. “It’s a corner property. It’s got a lot of potential.” She asked: “Why can’t we have a Sprouts on that corner?”
(A Sprouts would need five acres, for starters.)
Kim Knaus, a council member, said if San Bernardino wants to prosper, it might take a page from Rancho Cucamonga, which sets standards and says no.
When the vote came, Fred Shorett, Juan Figueroa and Theodore Sanchez voted yes. Voting no: Ibarra, Knaus, Treasure Ortiz and Mario Flores.
The item failed.
Mayor Helen Tran, who doesn’t get to vote, asked if in the future the council might be able to halt an unpopular project earlier in the process. The city attorney said no.
However, the McDonald’s isn’t a dead issue.
Flores, one of those who voted no, asked for a reconsideration. That motion was approved 7-0 at the July 15 council meeting.
The reconsideration will be heard at the 5 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 5 meeting.
Opponents found that hard to accept. When someone complained on the Facebook page San Bernardino City Hall Tracker, Scott Beard, a developer not connected to the project, said a denial sends the wrong message to investors and robs the city of economic activity.
Beard called Baseline and Sierra Way “a depressed neighborhood that needs some kind of new development” and added: “We as a city at this moment cannot think we are above a McDonald’s.”
On Thursday afternoon, I visited the intersection.
The northeast corner has a liquor store. The northwest corner, where the McDonald’s would go, has two boarded-up buildings and a weedy parking lot. The two south corners have tire shops.
I stepped into Discount Tire. Did employees want a McDonald’s?
“Oh yeah! I could walk across the street to lunch,” Jon Cruz enthused. He typically drives a mile or more to eat.
“We all want it because it would bring more traffic,” said Bill Powers, the general manager. “I don’t eat McDonald’s, but it would be good for customers, especially on a Saturday morning, when they’re leaving their car and want breakfast.”
I told Powers that some want San Bernardino to hold out for something better, like housing. He scoffed.
Said Powers: “I don’t know why the city wouldn’t want to clean this place up.”
David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, because the newspaper didn’t hold out for something better. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, and follow davidallencolumnist on Facebook or Instagram, @davidallen909 on X or @davidallen909.bsky.social on Bluesky.