The Chaffey College updated the Fontana City Council on phase one of the new Fontana campus on Nov. 12. Located at 11070 Sierra Avenue, Fontana, the $210.6 million campus will have four buildings across its 15-acre site. According to the college’s projections, construction will begin in January 2026, with an estimated completion by January 2029.
“We like to dream and achieve,” said Troy Ament, Chaffey College’s associate superintendent of administrative services and emergency operations, who addressed the city council. “Chaffey College has been dreaming about a Fontana campus and we’re now achieving that Fontana campus. We’d like to show you what we have so far.”
Chaffey College has an existing Fontana campus and other campuses in Rancho Cucamonga, Chino and an Industrial Technical Learning Center — also in Fontana.
The new campus will have a welcome center and library, an instructional building, an automotive technology laboratory and an operations and maintenance building. Other sites and infrastructure include parking lots, utilities and green spaces for open sitting and studying.
The welcome center and library will be four stories and 51,000 gross square feet; the three-story instructional building will be 28,000 gross square feet; the technology laboratory will be three stories and be a total of 50,000 gross square feet and the operations building will be two stories and 8,000 gross square feet.
Proposed rendering of the “state-of-the art” automotive technology laboratory to be included at Chaffey College’s new Fontana campus.
DPR Construction and SmithGroup are involved in the project and are working through its design phase. The funds for this project came from Measure P.
The measure was approved in November 2018 and provided $700 million in bond funding. Alongside the new Fontana campus, other funded projects include a new Ontario campus and improvements across the existing campus locations.
“It’s in a great location and there are a lot of amenities right away for students,” Ament said, referring to the new campus.
The campus will include programs for arts and sciences, business and math, information technology, humanities and social sciences, automotive technology, advanced manufacturing, economic development, industrial electricity, cloud computing, welding and physical and occupational therapy assistance.
“The one I’d like to highlight the most is the automotive technology program, which is leaving the Rancho Cucamonga campus and coming to an area where we did a survey,” Ament said. “The survey results showed that this is the best place in our services district to have the state-of-the-art automotive technology program as well as the welding program.”
So far, the project site has been rough graded since April of this year and final campus building plans are underway. Ament said that the college had to go through a two-year environmental study with the federal government to approve the building’s construction.
Ament praised both DPR Construction and SmithGroup for utilizing the design-build process, which streamlines procedures and allows for quicker construction.
“We’re excited to get this done as fast as possible, and I think they’re the best group to do it,” Ament said.