Blair Ballard Architects, INC

ONTARIO MOUNTAIN VILLAGE

Location: Ontario, CA
Client: Regal Entertainment Group, Edwards Cinemas
Program: 14 Screen Cinema Plex
Square Footage: 69,900 SF
Project Status: March 1999

Description:

A trip to the Edwards Theater Mountain Village Entertainment Center built in 1999 is a walk in the park, literally. An active fountain in the center of the theater’s park like front yard welcomes patrons to the 14 Stadium Seating Theaters – one of the chains more than one hundred Southern California Theaters.

The Ontario Mountain Village Entertainment Center which includes the theater, a 942 space parking garage and three restaurants, designed by Blair Ballard Architects of Laguna Beach, California is located in Ontario, California at Mountain Avenue and the San Bernardino Freeway in a neighborhood area that has seen a decline in recent years.

“Property values had begun to slip,” said City Councilman Alan Wapner,” and, “instead of waiting for it to be too late, we decided to try and turn things around.”

Blair Ballard Architects is responsible for developing the design concepts outlined in the specific plan prepared by Calthorpe for City of Ontario.

The specific plan provides for corner parks at the intersection of Mountain Avenue and Sixth Street framed by new proposed restaurants and retail shops. The corner parks provide a view corridor to the major uses beyond including the Edwards Cinema on the west parcel and the proposed retail anchor tenants on the east parcel. The specific plan also calls for a Main Street design concept linking the Cinema on a visual axis with the Target Center two blocks to the south. At the top of Main Street one finds the large water feature fountain greeting the theatre patron with the box office and lobby of the theater centered on the Main Street axis beyond.

The $15 million project was built on a $3 million parcel provided by the City of Ontario as part of the Ontario Mountain village Redevelopment Project. Another $3 million parcel across the street was added when Edwards agreed to build the $5 million dollar parking garage, which includes an Ontario Police Department substation. Both the garage and substation were built at Edwards’ expense in a deal that gave the Newport Beach cinema company 11 acres across the street from the complex in the Northeast corner of Mountain Avenue and Sixth Street.

The lobby has a 3,000 square foot mural designed by Architect, Blair Ballard and painted by Los Angeles area artists as a tribute to Hollywood, frame each of the auditoriums entries just inside the lobby entrance. The 69,000 square foot theater has marble floors and more than two miles of neon lights. Each of the auditoriums has stadium seating in which each row is 18 inches higher than the row in front so there are no obstructed views of the screen. The sound system is state of the art digital.