which is a massive undertaking,” Welday says. The goal is creating places people want to visit rather than simply driving through. Water infrastructure receives equal attention through partnerships with Cucamonga Valley Water District and Inland Empire Utility Agency. The latter focuses on groundwater replenishment to reduce reliance on imported water. Meanwhile, the city is expanding its automated traffic management system to handle increased congestion and developing a second electrical substation for its municipal utility. “It’ll allow us additional capacity to be able to serve development as it comes in,” Welday explains. The West Foothill project already does this, transforming an old state highway into a modern, bicycle-friendly corridor with cycle tracks and new paving. HOUSING AND DEVELOPMENT SURGE The housing boom transforming California has found fertile ground in Rancho Cucamonga, where developers are racing to meet demand from families priced out of coastal markets. Since adopting Plan RC in 2021, the city has approved a surge of residential projects that dwarf previous development cycles. “Right now, we’re looking at roughly 4,000 units at some place in the development process, which is huge for us,” Marquez explains. “Since we adopted our general plan RC, we’ve really seen an uptick in the number of units that we’ve entitled.They haven’t necessarily all been built yet, but we’ve entitled quite a bit.” The pipeline consists mostly of multifamily developments, responding to regional demand for affordable housing options. Current market conditions have slowed construction despite strong entitlement activity.“High construction, lending rates, cost of materials, some developers concerned with softening rents, that’s led to some folks pausing but not going away,” Marquez says.“We anticipate the construction activity to ramp up, but the entitlement activity is still higher than what it was prior to our recent adoption of the general plan.” 188 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 06, ISSUE 08 RANCHO CUCAMONGA, CA
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