Project Slated for Ontario Airport Area
The transformation of a 70-acre site at Interstate 10 and Haven Avenue into a $250-million mixed-use business park begins Monday, adjacent to Ontario International Airport.
La Jolla-based Sickels Group will break ground for Centrelake, a project that will include 20 buildings on parcels ranging from one to seven acres, surrounded by more than two acres of man-made lakes and waterscapes. The development will eventually provide 1 million square feet of commercial office and research and development space, 800 hotel rooms, a freeway-oriented restaurant park and support facilities.
The first phase of constructon includes a seven-story hotel and six-story mid-rise office building with work on infrastructure for the park, such as roads and drainage systems, to be completed in the late fall, and finished parcels available for sale to developers in December.
The master plan for Centrelake was developed by Langdon Wilson Mumper Architects of Newport Beach for Sickels, a group of affiliated firms, as a focal point of development activity in the Inland Empire. Earlier, Sickels undertook the renovation of the historic U. S. Grant Hotel in downtown San Diego and Haven Point, a 58,000-square-foot office building at Ontario Center, near the current project.
Michael L. Loban, vice president of commercial/industrial real estate for Sickels, said that Centrelake’s immediate airport proximity will rival the development around the John Wayne/Orange County and Los Angeles International airports.
“It’s easy to see the parallel between this area and Orange County 15 to 20 years ago,” he said.
“With the expansion at Ontario International Airport that includes a new 750,000-square-foot terminal, the new facilities will be able to accommodate up to 9 million passengers a year, and the traffic level is expected to increase to 7 million by the summer of 1988 and to 12 million by 1995.”
Loban said that with airport expansion, availability of housing and a skilled labor pool, the Inland Empire is ready for increased commercial development, and Centrelake will be situated in the geographic center of several major master-planned developments.
With more than 1.8 million people, the Inland Empire (San Bernardino-Riverside counties) currently outranks San Francisco, Denver, Seattle and Phoenix in population. Between 1980 and 1984 alone, the population growth in that region was 16.2%, Loban said.
He added that this growth has been fueled by the readily affordable land and housing costs averaging 40% less than in neighboring Los Angeles County. As a result of these reasonable land costs, San Bernardino and Riverside counties led the state in housing starts in 1984, with 30,400 units.
Landscaping plans at Centrelake call for vast grassy areas and installation of two major entrance features at Guasti Road and Turner Avenue at the western edge of the development and Haven Avenue on the east. The California Department of Transportation right-of-way, between the site and the freeway, will also be landscaped.
