Why Downtown Fontana Is Quietly Planning to Close Sierra Avenue to Cars

Drive Sierra Avenue on a Friday night right now and you will hit orange cones you did not expect, a marquee lit up outside a building that looks freshly renovated, and maybe a line of people waiting to get into a room you didn't know existed. Most residents assume this is just another stretch of downtown getting a facelift. It is not. The city has said out loud what it's actually building toward, and it is bigger than new paint on old storefronts.

Fontana Councilmember Phillip Cothran told a reporter this spring that the plan is for "Sierra Avenue between Arrow and the railroad tracks" to stop taking car traffic entirely. Not reduced lanes. Not a road diet. No cars, eventually, on the block most residents currently drive through to get anywhere downtown. That single detail reframes everything else happening on those two blocks right now, from the theater reopening to the parking structures going up nearby. None of it is random. It's sequencing for a street that's rehearsing to become a plaza.

What's already standing on those two blocks

Before the fences went up, this stretch of Sierra Avenue and the adjoining Spring Street already held more than most residents give it credit for.

Stage Red sits at 8463 Sierra Avenue inside a building that started life in 1937 as a single-screen movie theater. The city bought it in 2003, reconditioned it in 2007, and let it sit mostly dormant for over a decade before turning it into a live music venue. It reopened on June 15, 2024, with Fontana native Sammy Hagar performing at his own hometown ribbon cutting, backed by producer IZ Avila. The venue holds close to 500 people split across a general admission pit, a tiered mezzanine, and a 50-seat balcony. Venue manager David Uribe described the goal at the time as building something that makes people say "Wow" the moment they walk in, and the booking calendar has backed that up since. What opened as a one-night homecoming for a local rock star has since put Missing Persons on the calendar for September 26 and the Young Dubliners for October 18. That's a fast climb from a single hometown show to a real touring circuit stopping in downtown Fontana.

A few blocks over on Spring Street, the Art Depot Gallery occupies a restored 1915 Santa Fe rail depot that the city converted into gallery space in 2008. Admission is free, and the programming rotates through Fontana Arts' rotating showcase model, most recently a summer exhibition of work by Nigerian sculptor Kalu Okpara that ran into mid-July. Next door sits the Fontana Veterans Memorial Rose Garden at 16830 Spring Street, and the Pacific Electric Trail, an 18-mile paved corridor running from Claremont to Rialto, threads directly through this stretch of downtown before continuing east. If you've ever biked or walked the trail through Fontana and wondered why there's suddenly a rose garden and a converted train depot along the route, that's why. These weren't planned as attractions in isolation. They sit inside the same footprint the city is now rebuilding around.

The math behind the fences

The construction isn't cosmetic. It's called the Forge District, and as of a spring 2026 local news report, the city has committed more than $100 million to it. The centerpiece under construction now is a multi-level complex bringing 300 housing units to Sierra Avenue and Arrow Boulevard, expected to take roughly two more years to finish. That's the part most residents can see from the street.

What's less visible is the sequencing, and it's the part that actually explains the disruption. The city approved two new parking structures specifically because removing on-street car lanes only works if drivers have somewhere else to park. The first, an east structure, was completed in early 2025. A second, larger structure two blocks west was targeted for completion around the middle of this year. In other words, the city is building the off-street parking capacity before it takes away the on-street driving lane, not after. That ordering matters if you live nearby and have been annoyed by the detours. The parking is landing first on purpose, so that by the time Sierra Avenue actually goes car-free, there's already somewhere to leave the car.

The city has also reduced parking requirements and building setbacks for new commercial development downtown, part of a zoning update the council approved in 2023, and launched a Downtown Revitalization Loan Incentive Program this year to help existing property owners fund facade and interior upgrades rather than sell or sit vacant. Put together, the incentives are aimed less at attracting one big anchor tenant and more at keeping the small businesses already on Sierra Avenue in place long enough to benefit from the foot traffic a car-free block would bring.

What this actually changes for a Friday night

None of this means downtown Fontana is unrecognizable yet. The 300 housing units are still under construction. The second parking structure was a target, not a guarantee. Sierra Avenue still takes cars today. But the direction is set, and it's worth knowing before you plan around a street that may not function the same way in another year or two.

If you're already in the habit of catching a show at Stage Red, that lineup is getting less local and more national by the month, which is a good sign for anyone hoping this stays more than a one-summer novelty. If you haven't wandered into the Art Depot Gallery, it's free, it's inside a genuinely restored piece of Fontana's railroad history, and the rotating exhibit schedule means there's likely something new up by the time you read this. If you walk or bike the Pacific Electric Trail, you're already passing through the exact stretch the city is trying to make walkable on purpose, roses and all.

The bigger takeaway is simpler than any single venue or exhibit. The construction fences on Sierra Avenue aren't a temporary inconvenience on the way to nothing in particular. They're the visible, inconvenient middle of a plan the city has stated plainly: take a driving street and turn it into a place people walk to on purpose. Whether that plan lands on schedule is an open question. That it's the actual plan, and not just seasonal roadwork, is not.

If you've lived in Fontana long enough to remember when this stretch of Sierra Avenue was mostly empty storefronts, it's worth watching how this plays out. Neighborhoods that successfully turn a driving street into a walkable one tend to see the effects show up first in foot traffic and small business survival rates, long before they show up in home values. For now, downtown Fontana is still in the fences-and-detours phase. That's usually the least photogenic part of any revitalization, and also the part that tells you the most about where things are actually headed.

If you're curious what any of this means for your own street or your own home's place in a changing Fontana, Lisa Warshaw has been tracking the Inland Foothill communities closely enough to talk through it in plain terms. Reach out anytime to schedule a free concierge consultation.