Downtown Ontario Gets a New Look

Like a Phoenix, new life is emerging in downtown Ontario, not from ashes, but on land cleared with the help of the Ontario Redevelopment Department. After decades of deliberation, debate and denial, the downtown area is being reborn as a 21^st Century destination.

Ontario Town Square will provide housing adjacent to Ontario's Civic Center, a block from the City Library, and a few miles from Ontario International Airport. If the visionaries are correct, restaurants, boutique shops and internet cafes will bring additional traffic to the downtown area.

Ontario Town Square, under construction in August, 2008

Ontario, CA, was founded by the Chaffey brothers in 1881 and named after the Canadian province. In the next decades, Euclid Avenue businesses benefited from its location at the intersection of State Route 83 and the most direct road from Los Angeles to Palm Springs. Motorists headed for the desert dined at Ford's Restaurant and job seekers towing mobile homes parked in one of the city's many trailer courts.

After World War II, an influx of returning GI's created a construction boom in all directions around what we now think of as Ontario's historic homes. When the interstate highway system sliced through the region north and south of downtown Ontario, Euclid Avenue traffic dwindled. Shopping centers took business from downtown stores. The annual All-States Fourth of July celebration along Euclid Avenue, an opportunity to picnic and catch up with others who emigrated from "back home", was reduced to a parade by the 1970's.

Ontario City Library

The Ontario Town Square development is on the east side of Euclid Avenue, north of Holt Boulevard. Coupled with the Ontario City Hall, its Multi-Purpose Building, the City Library and the University of La Verne law center, it has the potential of creating a viable center-city community within the larger city.