Piemonte At Ontario Center
Panattoni Development, LLC bringing Italian-style village to Southern California’s fastest-growing city.
Susan H. Fishman

Panattoni is developing Piemonte at Ontario Center, a mixed-use lifestyle center in Ontario, California.

Panattoni is a privately held development company headquartered in Sacramento, California. For the first 15 of its 20 years, the company’s focus was on the industrial side of the business, as well as suburban office. It wasn’t until a few years ago that the company began to create a retail division comparable to its industrial business and, today, has 30 retail projects in the pipeline across the country.

Panattoni’s most recent project is Piemonte at Ontario Center, a pedestrian-oriented 24-hour urban community that includes 309,000 square feet of retail space, 54,800 square feet of restaurants and services, 806 for-sale residences, 769 multifamily units, 550,000 square feet of Class A corporate office space, a 45,000 square-foot health club/fitness center, an 8,000-seat sports and entertainment arena and a 200-plus room, four-star business/headquarters hotel and restaurant.

“It will be a project you won’t see in every community,” says Jeff Pintar, national retail partner for Panattoni.

The development will be a core destination and lifestyle experience for the Inland Empire as well as Southern California. Piemonte is located within the City of Ontario at the border of Rancho Cucamonga, one of the nation’s fastest growing cities, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The center is adjacent to Ontario Mills, which draws more than 21 million annual visitors. It has immediate accessibility from the I-10 and I-15 freeways, with high visibility along I-10. It’s also surrounded by 8,561 units of existing and proposed for-sale and multifamily housing within a 2-mile radius.

“It’s a phenomenal piece of real estate,” notes Pintar. “It’s amazing that it sat vacant for so long since it’s right near the intersection of two of the most traveled freeways in Southern California and across the street from Ontario Mills, which we’ve been told is their most successful project in all of the U.S.”

The mixed-use Piemonte at Ontario Center will include retailers Target, Cost Plus World Market, Best Buy and PetSmart in its first phase of development.

“Our goal for the retail under the residential is more of a lifestyle, urban type of product mix,” notes Pintar.

The design for Piemonte at Ontario Center came from Architects Orange, a firm based in Orange, California, that has experience with both mixed-use and residential projects. The company has chosen an Italian theme for the center, based on the history of the land, which was owned by a family of winegrowers from the Piemonte region in Italy. They moved to Ontario 150 years ago and had vineyards on the site. The theme of the center will stay true to its roots, from the name to the landscaping to the design to the village components, including walkways lined with olive trees and a bit of a vineyard.

The city of Ontario wanted to create a project that was going to raise the bar for their community, according to Pintar.

“The city had a vision and has been very disciplined about it — to create a project at a much different level than what people perceive Ontario to be,” says Pintar. “They used to think it was an industrial town with a bunch of big boxes; they didn’t think of it as the leading edge of commerce from an office, retail or residential standpoint. So the city worked hard at creating a new reality for the community.”

That new reality includes an international airport and as much international business as most major markets around the country. It also includes higher-end housing with million-dollar homes within 3  miles of the Piemonte site and four or five office buildings currently under construction. Pintar predicts Piemonte at Ontario Center will become regional in nature.

“Because of I-10 and I-15, you’ve got a trade area that exceeds well beyond a normal trade area for this kind of a project,” he says. “The immediate surrounding area is going through an amazing transformation, and the market is definitely seeing the potential here in the city of Ontario. So we feel pretty fortunate to be a part of it.”