City officials defend Ontario Mills, the convention center and the planned sports arena as beneficial to the city's growth, but critics, including a former mayor, contend that the immediate needs of the community should not be ignored so that city leaders can continue to build.

Jim Bowman At the Mills Mall

More are on the way as the city's leaders scramble to make their marks before moving on to higher office, or mounting campaigns to finish what they started. 

Ontario Mills, the Ontario Convention Center, the new terminal buildings at Ontario International Airport. Soon, an indoor sports arena and a new police station and courthouse will grace the city. 

Few doubt their utility, but some question their necessity. 

Since the dawn of politics, people have questioned government projects and priorities. 

Critics say city leaders should concentrate on providing services rather than erecting monuments. 

"That's what the City Council should be doing, in my opinion - instead of building convention centers and sports arenas, taking care of infrastructure," said former Ontario Mayor Bob Ellingwood. 

The sports arena project should have little or no impact on Ontario, said Councilman Alan Wapner. If the owner goes under, "we sell it or the bank takes it over or whatever. The city is not at a loss," he said. 

"If we get the deal we're looking for, the city's not going to be on the hook for any of this, except possibly on-site parking tax revenue," Wapner said.  Given priorities, the arena is going to take a huge back seat to maintaining the city's roads, water lines and sewer system, he said.

Wapner, an Ontario police sergeant

Ellingwood said the current City Council has its priorities mixed up. Ontario should concentrate less on serving the region and more on serving its residents, he said. 

Ontario bears too large a burden for the region, he said. "We should bear a little more than the rest of them, but not everything." 

It's enough to have the airport and some hotels, Ellingwood said, but he wonders whether Ontario also must be home to the convention center, a megamall, the courthouse and a landfill. 

"I'd like to get the trash out of town; it's contaminating the earth, but instead we're concerned about building a courthouse," Ellingwood said. "We had a courthouse in town, I worked to get it out. Courthouses don't attract the best people into town. We were always having them escape." 

But city leaders are looking to the courthouse project as a way to breathe new life into downtown. 

Although Ontario's downtown is unlikely to be the commercial center it once was, Mayor Gus Skropos said it is important for other reasons. 

"From an image perspective and from a community perspective, it's tremendously important," Skropos said. "It does continue to be the heart of the community." 

City leaders also foresee a continued dedication to Ontario's traditional population centers, especially Euclid Avenue and north Mountain Avenue. 
 

Councilman Gary Ovitt

"It enhances their neighborhood and it brings their property values up," Councilman Gary Ovitt said of the Mountain Avenue redevelopment effort.  If its heart is to the west, Ontario's stomach is on its east end. The Big Three, as Skropos calls them, are the city's nourishment.

The numbers appear to support an image of Ontario's increasing popularity as a place to visit. 

From 1993 to 1996, the number of people employed to serve tourists in the hotel and amusement industry rose by 20 percent. 

During that period, jobs in the retail sector grew by 5.6 percent. 

Although its impact on the 1996 statistics was minimal, the effect of Ontario Mills on the city's employment base was measurable, said local economist John Husing. 
 

"Those three projects will create almost a magnetic effect," Skropos said.  "They will continue to enhance Ontario as a destination community in Southern California."

Skropos

Ontario leaders take credit for building these sites. Clockwise from top left: Gary Ovitt, a key player in the Mountain Avenue redevelopment project; Gus Skropos, who pushed for a convention center; Jim Bowman, who helped bring Ontario Mills to the city; Jerry DuBois, who pressed for a bandstand; and Alan Wapner, who is the force behind a sports arena.

Jerry DuBois