San Bernardino Retail Space for Lease: 2026 Market Guide

San Bernardino retail space for lease in 2026 spans a wider range than almost any submarket we cover, from sub-$2.00 per square foot NNN inline suites on aging boulevards to $3.50-plus pads along Hospitality Lane. As the county seat and one of the largest cities in the Inland Empire — roughly 220,000 residents inside the city and more than two million within a 20-minute drive — San Bernardino gives retailers real trade-area depth at rents that still pencil for concepts priced out of coastal Orange County. The catch is that the city is not one market. A tenant who signs on the wrong corridor pays for foot traffic that never shows up, so we tour San Bernardino corridor by corridor rather than treating a citywide average as if it means anything.

How much does San Bernardino retail space for lease cost in 2026?

Most San Bernardino retail space for lease runs $1.50 to $3.25 per square foot per month on a triple-net basis in 2026, with the Hospitality Lane corridor and freeway-visible pads commanding $2.75 to $3.75 and older neighborhood strips on the west and north sides sitting closer to $1.40 to $2.10. Net charges add another $0.45 to $0.95 per foot per month. That spread of roughly two-and-a-half times between the strongest and softest corridors is the single most important number a tenant needs to understand before signing.

To put those figures in context, San Bernardino generally leases below Riverside and Rancho Cucamonga and roughly in line with Fontana and Rialto. A quick-service operator paying $4.50 in central Orange County can often secure comparable square footage here in the low $3.00s, and a service or medical tenant that does not depend on impulse traffic can do meaningfully better on the secondary corridors.

Hospitality Lane and the I-10 corridor

Hospitality Lane is San Bernardino's premier retail and restaurant address, a dense cluster of sit-down restaurants, hotels, banks, and service retail wrapped around the I-10 and Waterman Avenue interchange. Daytime population is heavy thanks to surrounding office and government employment, and freeway visibility is genuinely valuable here. Second-generation restaurant space and endcaps with drive-thru potential lease fastest, typically $2.75 to $3.75 per square foot NNN, and well-located pads can push higher when a hard corner and a signalized entrance come together. Availability is thin, and the best suites rarely reach the open market, so tenants who want this corridor need to be positioned before a space is formally listed.

Just west, the Tippecanoe and Waterman Avenue stretches near the I-10 carry strong daily-needs demand and slightly more forgiving rents in the $2.25 to $3.00 range. For operators who want freeway proximity without Hospitality Lane pricing, these are the corridors we tour first.

Inland Center, downtown, and the Carousel Mall site

Inland Center on E Street remains the city's anchored regional shopping node, and the pads and shop space around it benefit from the mall's pull and the E Street and Inland Center Drive traffic counts. Inline space in the surrounding centers generally runs $1.90 to $2.75 per square foot NNN, with anchor-adjacent endcaps at the upper end. Downtown itself is in transition: the long-vacant Carousel Mall site is the subject of an ambitious redevelopment plan, and while a tenant should underwrite today's conditions rather than tomorrow's renderings, the corridor is one we watch closely because a genuine downtown reset would reprice nearby frontage. Government employment around the county and civic buildings provides a reliable weekday lunch and services base that the right operator can capture now.

University Parkway, Highland Avenue, and the neighborhood corridors

University Parkway near California State University, San Bernardino gives food, coffee, fitness, and service concepts a young, recurring customer base, and centers along the Parkway and Kendall Drive tend to hold occupancy well. Highland Avenue and 40th Street on the north side, along with Del Rosa and the Mount Vernon Avenue corridor to the west, are classic neighborhood-serving strips: grocery-anchored and unanchored centers where daily-needs tenants — nail salons, taquerias, insurance and tax offices, dentists, tutoring — do steady business at $1.40 to $2.25 per square foot NNN. These corridors reward tenants who match their concept to a specific catchment rather than chasing citywide traffic, and they are where a first-location operator can protect margin while building a customer base.

What do tenants pay beyond base rent in San Bernardino?

Base rent is only part of the number. Nearly all San Bernardino retail leases are triple net, so tenants also pay their pro-rata share of property taxes, insurance, and common area maintenance — commonly $0.45 to $0.95 per square foot per month, higher in newer or heavily amenitized centers. On a 1,800-square-foot suite quoted at $2.40 NNN with $0.70 in net charges, the real occupancy cost is closer to $3.10 per foot, or about $5,580 a month before utilities. We always underwrite the loaded number, not the headline rate, and we scrutinize the CAM budget for administrative markups and capital items that do not belong in an operating pass-through. If you are weighing structures, our explainer on a gross vs NNN retail lease breaks down exactly what each cost bucket includes.

Which tenants are leasing San Bernardino retail space in 2026?

Demand in 2026 is led by daily-needs and service categories that perform in a value-conscious, high-density trade area: quick-service and fast-casual restaurants, drive-thru coffee, urgent care and dental, fitness, discount and dollar formats, and personal services. Restaurant operators continue to chase the scarce drive-thru and second-generation food inventory, which keeps those spaces competitive. Medical and health-services tenants are expanding steadily, mirroring the broader pattern we track across the region in our Inland Empire retail market report. Landlords, for their part, are still offering meaningful tenant improvement dollars and free rent to credit tenants on the softer corridors, while holding firmer on Hospitality Lane and freeway pads where replacement demand is deep. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's QuickFacts for San Bernardino, the city's population density and household growth continue to support that daily-needs demand.

How we help tenants lease San Bernardino retail space

We represent tenants and operators the same way here as we do across the Inland Empire: we start with the trade area and the customer, not the listing. That means pulling traffic counts and daytime population by corridor, identifying the two or three centers that actually fit your concept, and negotiating base rent, net charges, tenant improvement allowance, and free rent as one package rather than one line at a time. Tenants exploring nearby options often pair a San Bernardino search with our Riverside retail space guide, and we are glad to tour both in a single afternoon. Since 1995 we have leased retail space across Southern California, and our job is to make sure the deal you sign reflects the corridor you are actually on. If you are evaluating San Bernardino retail space for lease, call us at 949-796-7275 or email leasing@digitalre.com and we will build you a shortlist worth touring.