Marketplace Development Wins Planning OK

RANCHO CUCAMONGA, CA-The city’s planning commission has approved plans by Marketplace Properties of Tustin for a $20-million, 80,000-sf shopping venue to be called Winery Estate Marketplace. The planning commission’s OK follows a recent approval by the city’s design review committee for the project, which the developer describes as an upscale neighborhood development at the southeast corner of Baseline Road and Day Creek Boulevard. The new shopping center will be minutes away from one of the largest retail projects under development in the Inland Empire, the new Victoria Gardens, which is a project of Cleveland’s Forest City Enterprises and Upland-based the Lewis Group of Cos. Victoria Gardens is scheduled to open in October. The planning commission’s approval of the Winery Estate plans means that Marketplace Properties can break ground soon on the project, says Michael Rue, president of Marketplace. The Winery Estate development formerly was called Day Creek Marketplace. It was planned as a neighborhood supermarket and drug store-anchored center, with leases already signed by a Walgreens drug store and a fast-food drive thru. However, the city and the project’s neighbor, Filippi Winery, envisioned a different kind of development, Rue explains, and the renamed project represents that vision. Instead of a typical neighborhood center, Rue says, the development as it is now planned resembles an authentic winery estate, with each building in the project modeled after winery buildings like those found in California’s Napa Valley and other wine country areas. Specialty grocer Henry’s Marketplace will now be the anchor for the project and will occupy a 27,300-sf building. Rue says Marketplace Properties is hoping to attract other specialty and lifestyle retailers to the development, which his company hopes to complete in time for an October 2005 opening. The new design “provides retailers and services that the community and the Joseph Filippi Winery visitors want,” he says. Rue’s firm worked closely with a city task force and with owners of the adjacent Joseph Filippi Winery, including VP Joseph Filippi, who suggested the new name for the project, which is being designed by Perkowitz+Ruth of Long Beach. Leasing agents for the project are Tony Archer and Matt Burnett of CB Richard Ellis Retail Services in Ontario.