The Agricultural Preserve, the unincorporated area largely containing dairy farms, promises to be the city's population center once developed, offering the type of high-end housing Ontario lacks. 

"How the ag preserve builds out will to a great degree determine the future of Ontario," City Manager Gregory Devereaux said. "It's our opportunity to bring better balance to the city, especially in terms of housing, recreational opportunities and open space." 

Although some, such as local economist John Husing, see the dairy preserve's lack of an existing framework for development is a significant barrier to construction. 

One thing is for sure: if Ontario annexes the preserve as expected, it will add an area a third of its existing size to its borders. 

Within those new borders, city leaders want to see between 80,000 and 101,000 new residents, a golf course, a major park and a college campus. 

A former Ontario mayor, Howard Snider, said the city has an important and difficult task ahead. 

"If it's done properly and slowly, being careful that you don't overdo it and flood the market, that (area) down there will stand on its own," Snider said. 

Councilman Gary Ovitt wants to make sure the city carefully controls the growth of the dairy preserve. 

"It's a way of expanding through a controlled growth process so we don't impact south Ontario in a negative way," Ovitt said. 

Ovitt's colleague, Councilman Alan Wapner, said the city hopes to entice the University of California or California State University to build a new campus in the preserve. 

Failing that, a second campus for Chaffey College would be an attractive alternative, he said. 

"It's expensive to develop these things on your own," Wapner said. "We have a big hole in the ag preserve, and that hole is for a major college or university." 

For Devereaux, the dairy preserve represents a chance to refresh the city's housing stock, to which relatively little has been added in recent years. 

"Ontario, being an older city, so much of the city has been built in eras gone by," Devereaux said. "Rebuilding those kinds of areas or keeping them vital is a very difficult task." 

Difficult, perhaps, but definitely essential, said Husing. A city must keep its older neighborhoods vibrant or risk having them slide from owner-occupied homes to absentee landlords. 

Devereaux said he believes the dairy preserve will develop rapidly compared to neighboring cities. 

"Even allowing for (economic) cycles, presuming that none of them is too deep or too long, the ag preserve will build out much quicker," Devereaux said. 

Bob Ellingwood, who was mayor in the early 1980s, said he opposes annexation because of what must be added to the area by the city. 

"There is missing about $1 billion in infrastructure," Ellingwood said. 

"Ontario is already too big. Anybody that thinks bigger is better doesn't understand." 

No water agency serves the area, and there is practically no flood control, storm drains or water and sewer lines, Ellingwood said. 

"If you don't put the onus on the land, then it means the people in north Ontario are going to subsidize the dairymen in terms of paying for the infrastructure," Ellingwood said. 

One obstacle to Ontario's development of the preserve is a legal challenge filed by environmental groups claiming the city's environmental impact report for the development is inadequate. 

Recently, the Sierra Club joined the lawsuit, said Otto Kroutil, the city's director of development. 

"We're anticipating some progress in that case sometime this summer," Kroutil said. 

"The heart of the lawsuit is not the adequacy or inadequacy of the EIR but a fundamental question of whether or not any kind of development should take place in the ag preserve." 

Kroutil said the city is more interested in seeing the area develop properly than the county would be. 

"The dairies are going to leave here in the next few years whether we want them to or not, and there will be a tremendous amount of development in the preserve," Koutil said. 

"Cities have a much better handle on development than counties do."