Kresge CEO Urges San Bernardino to Rethink Infrastructure, Development Priorities
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The Kresge Foundation President and CEO Rip Rapson, left, discusses infrastructure, public space and lessons from Detroit with Inland Empire Community Foundation President and CEO Michelle Decker during the 2026 Policy & Philanthropy Summit: All Together. Photo by Manny Sandoval
The head of a national foundation offered a candid assessment of San Bernardino on Thursday, urging local leaders to look beyond individual projects and invest in infrastructure, public spaces and stronger neighborhood connections.
Rip Rapson, president and CEO of The Kresge Foundation, made the remarks at the Inland Empire Community Foundation’s 2026 Policy & Philanthropy Summit: All Together during a conversation with IECF President and CEO Michelle Decker about lessons learned from American cities.
In a follow-up interview with Inland Empire Community News, Rapson said communities must distinguish between major regional systems and the smaller-scale infrastructure that shapes residents’ daily lives.
“There’s a kind of big infrastructure and there’s community infrastructure,” Rapson said.
He credited the Inland Empire with regional infrastructure, including transit and water and fire management systems, but said the more difficult challenge is building neighborhood-level connections.
“What are the ways of reducing heat? What are the ways of managing water? What are the ways of creating connectivity between communities?” he said.
Rapson said San Bernardino’s long, wide corridors make that work particularly difficult. He also pointed to the roughly 50-acre former mall site downtown as an opportunity to create a development that connects with the surrounding city instead of operating as an isolated project.
“You can just plop something down,” Rapson said. “But wouldn’t it be tremendous if you all could figure out a way to make that genuinely connect into the rest of the community and make it a public asset, not just private housing and a taco chain?”
His comments came one day after IECN attended a contentious San Bernardino City Council meeting where residents repeatedly urged city leaders to prioritize infrastructure and community needs over corporate development.
After appearing before the Planning Commission and City Council multiple times, a proposal for what would become San Bernardino’s ninth McDonald’s was approved 5-1. Council member Sandra Ibarra cast the sole dissenting vote.
Rapson viewed the project site while traveling through the city. He did not address its technical merits, but used the debate to illustrate that infrastructure includes more than roads, utilities and buildings.
“There’s hard infrastructure and then there’s soft infrastructure, too,” he said.
Rapson described block clubs, community organizations and local journalism as civic infrastructure that helps residents participate in public decisions.
“How does this development group actually make the case to a city council that the last thing we need is a McDonald’s?” Rapson asked.
When told the restaurant would be the city’s ninth McDonald’s, Rapson said he had counted several others while driving through San Bernardino.
“I don’t mean to be critical,” he said. “None of my business. But I just think there is a real need to become much more fine-grained in how we think about infrastructure.”
Rapson also offered an unvarnished impression of downtown San Bernardino, saying its concentration of government offices does not by itself produce the activity needed to attract residents and visitors.
“When you go into downtown San Bernardino, it’s all government stuff, right?” he said. “I can’t imagine that’s the kind of vibrancy that a young person would want.”
He said successful downtowns need open space, walkability, bicycle access, transit, restaurants and nightlife that give people reasons to remain after work.
Rapson described that approach as “democratizing public space” — creating accessible places where people can gather and participate in civic life.
“We used to have libraries. Now we have private online book sales,” Rapson said. “We used to have public swimming pools. Now they’re country clubs.”
Drawing from Kresge’s work in Detroit, Rapson said parks, food trucks, recreation, arts programming and support for neighborhood businesses can help turn underused areas into destinations.
“You want to be in a place that is fun to walk, fun to look around, has things to do,” he said. “I think that placemaking matters.”
Rapson also cautioned against treating the Inland Empire as a single uniform community. Transit, water management, parkland and open space cross city boundaries, he said, while housing, health and human service needs differ from one city to the next.
“How do you execute a health disparities agenda across San Bernardino and Riverside counties? I don’t know how you would do that,” Rapson said. “But I do think you can figure out how to do that in San Bernardino.”
He praised IECF for establishing a regional framework around economic mobility and racial and health disparities, but said implementation will require choosing specific communities where philanthropy, government and local organizations can begin producing results.
“Pick some places to get started and then hope that they add up and begin talking to one another,” he said.
The Kresge Foundation is a private national philanthropy that works to expand opportunity in American cities through community development, health, education, arts and culture, and human services. Its Detroit work has included long-term investments in neighborhoods, public spaces and civic institutions.
For San Bernardino, Rapson’s message was that development should be evaluated not only by what is constructed on a parcel, but by whether it improves quality of life, strengthens civic participation and advances a broader vision for the city.
