Off the 15 Freeway in western Riverside County, a former dairy farm is turning into Eastvale’s new downtown.
City Manager Mark Orme called it “the largest capital project in the city’s history” during a Tuesday, April 16, interview.
That history is relatively short: Eastvale is California’s second-youngest city. It was incorporated in 2010, about a year before neighboring Jurupa Valley. But it has grown quickly, and city officials are now creating a downtown to grow with it.
Eastvale’s current City Hall is a retail building that previously housed a Styles for Less. There isn’t much room to spare. The city council chambers are accessed by walking through the passport office. Many employees work in cubicles. And the main conference room is just big enough for people to squeeze between the table and wall.
“We have half our staff in a different site,” Community Development Director Gustavo Gonzalez said, referring to an old house owned by the city.
“We’re bursting at the seams here.”
About half a mile west lies the former Leal Ranch, which until recently was a farm. It’s the largest of Eastvale’s remaining undeveloped parcels. The roughly 160-acre property was bought by The New Home Company in 2022, and its development agreement specifies that part of the land — about 16 acres, Gonzalez said — will be controlled and operated by the city.
Six acres of that land will be home to the city’s civic center, Gonzalez said, which will include a 50,000-square-foot city hall, a library, a police station, parking, a park and a plaza. The other 10 acres will become what officials are calling a “lifestyle center,” which will host businesses, shops, parking and offices.
The center is being designed with pedestrians in mind. Gonzalez said the Americana at Brand in Glendale is one source of inspiration.
City officials are hoping downtown Eastvale becomes “a fourth hub” in the string of regional draws along the 15 Freeway corridor, alongside Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario Mills in Ontario and Dos Lagos in Corona.
While the goal is to serve residents, Gonzalez said, “we understand that for it to be successful, it’s gonna have to draw people from other places.”
Finance Director and Treasurer Amanda Wells, who has lived in Eastvale since it became a city, estimated that the city’s part of the build will cost up to $200 million, not including a fire station that has been added to the project.
Most downtowns are created organically, Gonzalez said, with buildings and shops going up gradually over many years.
But after Eastvale’s rapid growth, officials are working backward to build an official city center.
“It certainly allows us to create something special,” he said, with the goal of building a “living room” for the community and region.
Orme said that “the biggest concern with the current situation is our ability to serve the public.”
After having a city hall in a retail space, a library operating out of Roosevelt High School and no central hub for services, it “will be a huge benefit to the community to have a space that they can call their own,” he said.
“This has been the forefront of every vision the city council has had.”
The project broke ground in March 2023. A year later, construction is underway, and in place of grassy fields are dirt and heavy machinery.
Right now, Gonzalez said, crews are putting in roads and underground utilities. Permits have also been issued for the first model homes.
Designs for Eastvale’s future civic center show spacious, airy buildings in neutral colors.
An advisory committee of residents was formed to help create the vision for downtown Eastvale. Gonzalez said they wanted sleek, modern, clean architecture with lots of landscaping and light.
“They wanted to see something different and unique,” he said.
After the challenges posed by Eastvale’s current city hall, officials said gathering spaces were another consideration.
“City Hall is meant serve as a place where community comes together,” Orme said.
One example of such spaces will be the outdoor amphitheater beside the city council chambers.
During busy events or meetings, “you can open the glass doors, and there’s spillover seating,” Jimmy Chung, city engineer and public works director, said.
Surrounding the city-controlled section of downtown will be 2,500 new housing units. The homes, which will include several types of residential buildings, will account for most of the housing that the state says Eastvale must have by 2029, Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez, who grew up in Eastvale’s dairy community before it was a city, said there used to be “more cows than people.” Today, most of Eastvale’s land is developed.
The city’s growth is due in part to the affordable housing it offers to people working in Orange or Los Angeles counties. In 2010, the U.S. Census estimated its population to be 53,668, a number that had grown to 71,024 by 2022.
Eastvale’s residents are also affluent compared to the county average, with a median household income of $151,615 according to the U.S. Census Bureau, compared to $84,505 for the county. And the city is diverse, with a notably higher Asian population and lower White population than Riverside County as a whole — 27.8% versus 7.8%, and 34.9% versus 78.4%, respectively.
It still has a high commuter population, Gonzalez said, but that’s beginning to change, in part due to the increase in remote work that began during the pandemic.
The project has a ways to go.
The construction bid for the civic center is likely to go out early next year, with construction possibly completed by 2027, Chung said.
