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The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 1032

Location:
Los Angeles, California
Issue Date:
Page:
1032
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

"Many of die supporters were from old ranching families, die sons of the area's pioneers," says Antiica Hartig, a Rancho Cucamonga associate planner and local historian whose mother helped lead die incorporation campaign. "They'd been bom in die teens and had seen two wars, incredible growth, die freeways. They undcrskxxl change and accepted it as part of life. They just wanted to make it as gH)d as possible." Interestingly, die model that the ranchers chose to emulate was die coastal experiment in ultra-planned community living, Irvine. "Irvine's idea," says Bullcr, "was diat you can have a yard, single-family homes and jobs all here and still be a livable city.

That's what we want here, too." Rancho Cucamonga's first city plan was approved in 1981, and it has been followed like the Bible. It directed industry and offices down the hill near die freeway, where Skip Morris' Ontario Center would later emerge. It called for homes, schools, open space and shopping centers up die slope, widi Haven Avenue the spine. The plan includes a 100-acrc city park now under construction, a stadium for a minor-league baseball team, not yet started, and flood-control channels doubling as bike and walking paths, some of which arc already in use. Design stantlards are strict tile roofs and lots of pink and orange stucco.

The old idea of valuc-in-prcscntation was invoked. Says Bullcr: "If you dress nice, people think you know what you're doing even if you don't." Just like Irvine before it, Rancho Cucamonga quickly earned a reputation as nil-picky. Still, the opportunity to play ball on an empty field drew the same home builders who developed Orange County Birtcher, Cole, Lyons. In the early '80s, concedes. They rarely have a formal name, boundaries or government and arc often identified only by the freeway or the mall that anchors them.

But, writes Garrcau, "by any functional urban standard tall buildings, bright lights, office space that represents white-collar jobs, shopping, entertainment, prestigious hotels, corporate headquarters, hospitals with CAT scans, even population, each Edge City is larger dian downtown Portland, Portland, or Tampa or Tucson." You know the form: It was invented and perfected in Ixjs Angeles. Mid-Wil-shirc, Century City-Beverly Hills and West were among the first. In the San Fernando Valley, Sherman Oaks (where U.S. 101 hits die 405), Burbank-Univcrsal City and the Canoga Park-Chaisworth areas qualify. Colorado and 1 jke streets anchor an edge city from Pasadena to Arcadia.

To the south, die confluence around Disneyland and Anaheim Stadium is a huge edge city. Altogether, Garrcau counted 1 in die I Angeles Basin in various stages of development including the Ontario airport area. In Ontario, however, Uis Angeles is cloning its city form far from the ocean, and it's hard to know whether to shiver or clap. All die way back to medieval times, city building was a grand, respected endeavor, but now people wonder. Even Orange County, whose commercial centers arc envied around die world, has gagged on traffic and high office-vacancy rates and wants no more of edge city.

Ventura, for years a logical site for an edge city, is saving no in advance. For now, die coast has had enough. So inland it is. In "Cities and die WealUi of Nations," her landmark study on how big cities create big economics, Jane Jacobs wrote dial "civilizations in which cities stagnate don't develop and flourish further. RANCHO loi CUCAMONGA ANOEI.ES COUNTY UPLAND (g- (66 HAVEN I I FONTANA montclair ONTARIO i (7r I Ontario 111 1 INTERNATIONAL s.

Mr 'm, I AIRPORT a chino I dk SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY Jfc I llicy deteriorate." In diat light, perhaps die Ontario airport area represents L.A.'s willful refiaal to deteriorate. However you might judge L.A.'s sprawl, what would you expect it to do voluntarily cease to grow? No, diis "old" city is doing what it has always done: heading for wide-open space. And die Gateway to die Inland Empire has neitiier the luxury nor die inclination to resist. DAVID ARISS, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF CALIFOR-nia Commerce Centers, die largest industrial developer in die airport area, is one of die newcomers. He helped build die Orange County industrial market in die 70s and began working Ontario in 1984.

Ask him exactly how edge cities occur, and he laughs. It's not apparent? His complete history of dicir development takes about direc minutes. Ariss, it turns out, believes diat edge cities are an almost divine force of economics and he's not alone. Dennis Machcski, of die accounting Finn Price Wa-tcrhouse, who studied new urban centers for 1 6 years widi die Soudicm California Assn. of Governments, mimics Ariss' explanation widiout prompting.

First come the freeways. Then die houses, population, stores. Then die industrial boxes widi jobs. Then die final touch, die element diat puts die city in edge city: office buildings. ne difference between a suburb and an edge city is business, especially office buildings, which are sprouting in Southern 0 California's latest edge city, developing near the Ontario airport.

Ariss starts widi die freeways. In die hall of his office oil Haven Avenue, he has hung die famous photograph of Soudicm California taken from 450 miles up in space. He points to two dlin bands of white heading cast from what looks to be downtown Ixxs Angeles. "You know what diose arc, don't you?" he asks. He's talking about die 1 0 and 60 freeways.

"Those are die goddamn rivers!" he answers. "Just like die Mississippi, die Hudson, die Allegheny. Where all tilings must pass." The first major highway, of course, was Route 66, which came dirough die area in 1 9 1 5, but even before then Ontario and its surroundings had been defined by transit. It was crossed by an Indian trail before recorded history and was sclded only when the Santa Fc and Soudicm Pacific came through in die 1880s. When Interstate 1 0 was built in the '50s, it linked a string of company towns: Alta Ixima supported by SunKist, Fontana by Kaiser Steel, Cucamonga by vineyards and Ontario by its "international" airport (one flight daily to Mexico).

Ixis Angeles might as well have been in Fiji. Then in die '60s and early '70s, it happened: leakage over Pomona's Kellogg Hill, die last gear-grinding freeway grade between Ijos Angeles and die Inland Empire. got more crowded, more expensive, and people started saying, 'Well, I'll work dicrc, but at least I can get my home at remembers Randall I.cwis of Homes, die Ontario area's leading home builder. His parents, Ralph and Goldy, started the company in Clarcmont in die mid-'50s and in die '70s built some of die first starter tracts in die west San Bernardino Valley. As die '70s progressed, Ixwis and other builders began looking for even cheaper land in die unincorporated ranch towns farther cast along Route 66.

Once again, it appeared, L.A.'s suburban sprawl was devouring acreage without thought to planning or die environment. The exception was Rancho Cucamonga. In 1977, voters from tile small ranching towns of Eliwanda, Alta Iima and Cucamonga incorporated into a new city diat corralled 36 square miles of mostly empty land north of Interstate 10 and die airport. The town started widi a population of only 44,000, but city fatiicrs knew it was destined to grow rapidly. They just didn't want it to become a hodgepodge like die San Fernando Valley or most of Orange County.

Lewis Homes began developing Terra Vista, a massive 1 master-planned development with rxm to eventually house 9,000 families. Three other huge subdivisions including schools were planned and started, and land values crept higher. So die developers again moved one town east, to Fontana, where the closure of die Kaiser plant had left the city eager to develop anew. In both cities, stucco was slapped on walls fast enough to cam national notice: Rancho Cucamonga was the nation's sccond-fastcst-growing city in die 1980s, while Fontana grew 10 in 1990 alone. In the meantime, Ariss' California Commerce was carpeting the flallands cast of die airport in Ontario.

Not really suitable for housing because of airport noise, die area had always seemed prime for warehousing and distribution operations with its proximity to major freeways, railways and die airport. But how to get started? Two of die biggest developers in Orange County had an answer. Again it was "Follow Irvine." Partners Don Shaw, a major independent developer; die I.usk a huge residential and commercial builder, and Cadillac Fairvicw, a now-defunct Canadian developer, hired Ariss in 1 984 to master-plan an industrial center. "Shaw kept saying, 'lxt's buy one big chunk and do it right, like remembers Ariss. In the early '80s, die partners spent 1 5 million in seed money on a 1 plot and built some of the most modem warehouses in Soudicm California.

It was speculation, a measured gamble diat manufacturers of retail goods from tennis shoes to baseball bats were lixiking for cheap space where dley could store dicir wares and LOS ANGELES TIMES MAGAZINE, MARCH 15, 1992 17 Map by Sieve Banks.

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