The Los Angeles Dodgers farm team is headed to cow country.
Set to rise on former dairy farms in south Ontario, a sprawling sports complex that will be home to a Single A Dodgers affiliate as well as nearly 50 sport fields is under construction. A ceremony Monday kicked things off in a public way.
Any lingering doubt about the team was cleared up within seconds.
“If you haven’t heard, it’s the Dodgers affiliate,” declared Dan Bell, the Ontario city spokesperson. The audience of more than 100, gathered under a large tent in the dirt yards from an open pit, cheered.
The so-far-unnamed minor league team will begin play in April 2026. The Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, the local Dodger team since 2011, will lose that affiliation, as you may have read here Sunday.
Several Dodgers officials, as well as retired third baseman Ron Cey, attended Monday’s event.
“We’re excited to see a lot of players start their professional career right here in Ontario,” said Matt McGrath, the Dodgers’ director of player development. McGrath said he’d passed on going to New York for Game 3 of the World Series to attend the groundbreaking.
I didn’t have that option, but I was in Ontario too. Give me hometown news any day.
As diligent readers will recall, I’d reported on the $151 million in construction contracts approved Oct. 15 by the City Council for this ballpark. The other day, giving Rancho Cucamonga its due, I wrote about the new lease signed by the Quakes that will keep that team at Rancho’s city-owned ballpark through at least 2039.
Seemed only right to complete the trilogy by witnessing Ontario’s moment in the sun.
(At least I presume it’s only a trilogy. I reserve the right to weigh in again. For instance, if instead of Sacramento, the penny-pinching A’s leave Oakland for Upland to save money on uniform stitching.)
I drove to the event from Claremont on a route that helps illustrate the site’s relative remoteness. Google directed me south on semi-rural Ramona Avenue to the 60 Freeway. Exiting on Vineyard Avenue, I headed south to Riverside Drive, itself largely undeveloped.
The complex will be built on the south side of Riverside Drive, across from Whispering Lakes Golf Course. A sewage treatment plant is near. But so are homes, part of a wave of development.
Brent Miles, the president of the Quakes as well as of the upcoming Ontario team, acknowledged that the site isn’t exactly urban.
“You’ve got to have a bit of imagination,” Miles told me cheerfully. “It was a dairy farm. When it was a dairy farm, you needed a lot of imagination.”
The land was once home to the Orange Blossom and De Boer dairies, according to a 2016 historical survey.
Ontario officials had approached Miles about its desire for a team and he walked them through the process. Major League Baseball had the final say about sanctioning a team and choosing the affiliation.
“The brand new ballpark and this complex, it was very appealing to them,” Miles said.
It will be up to MLB to announce the new affiliation for the Quakes starting in 2026. Everybody knows it’s going to be the Angels. In the meantime, “we know in 2025 the Dodgers will still be in Rancho Cucamonga,” Miles said.
Can two cities some 11 miles apart sustain two Single A minor league teams? Miles, who will oversee them both for owner Bobby Brett, says yes, based on a market study.
Ontario will draw from the south and west, Rancho Cucamonga from the north and San Bernardino’s stadium from the east. Up to 20% of Quakes fans now come from Ontario. But the two cities are growing quickly enough that their population increase will make up for any loss, Miles said.
Also, with both teams under the same ownership, “we’ll have lots of synergies, fun and creative themes,” Miles said.
What will the Ontario team be named, anyway? Suggestions are being sought. Go to OntarioProfessionalBaseball.com to offer a name and why it “embodies the essence of our community.” Deadline is Nov. 8.
Some joker on Reddit suggested the Ontario Warehouses. That’s probably not what officials have in mind, but it’s great anyway.
The 8,000-seat ballpark will be designed by Populous, the sports architecture firm behind Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the current version of Yankee Stadium — the one where the Dodgers are clobbering the home team.
Getting less attention is the surrounding complex named Ontario Sports Empire. It’ll feature multipurpose fields, youth and adult baseball and softball fields, football and rugby fields and two championship baseball diamonds, 48 fields in all.
At 190 acres, the complex will be larger than Disneyland. Its cost will be close to $400 million, according to Scott Ochoa, the city manager, with much of the funding coming from the Measure Q sales tax.
Because the complex is planned to be top tier, Ochoa expects interest from travel teams around Southern California and beyond.
Related Articles
They’ll be the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes through 2039 or longer
Resilience of Japanese internees seen in ‘Contested Histories’ in LA
Metrolink boosts service but drops last train to San Bernardino
Could Dodgers’ postseason secret weapon be this Cardinals fan?
Kris Kristofferson had varied interests as Pomona College student too
Related development is planned, including two hotels, restaurants, bars and office space for a “stadium village.” “We don’t want to have a stadium by itself,” Ochoa said.
South Ontario is on its way to becoming a city within a city. The former dairy land is largely empty of cows and gradually becoming suburban, just as grapes and citrus gave way to red tiled roofs.
Interviews over, and with crews breaking down the event setup, I drove out of the construction zone along Ontario Avenue. At the corner of Riverside Drive, the rubble of a dairy house and milking parlor lay, ready to be carted off to make way for the future.
brIEfly
Driving south on Archibald Avenue after the ceremony, I stopped at a red light by a new housing development, Country Lane by Lennar Homes. Name on the overhead sign leading in: Dolomite Street. I burst out laughing. Yes, dolomite is a kind of a rock. But as an admirer of 1970s blaxploitation films like “Dolemite,” I like to imagine that Dolomite Street intersects with Coffy Drive, Shaft Avenue and Superfly Boulevard.
David Allen writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, baby. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on X.