The Ontario Vineyard Medical Campus represents a piece of Kaiser Permanente’s two billion dollar expansion plan in the Inland Empire, which is fueled by a significant influx of people moving into the region. A team led by WWCOT Architects, assisted by Meléndrez, was selected to complete a site master plan and design the initial phase of the medical campus.

The vision for the project was based upon creating a cohesive “pedestrian campus” environment, which had to be established with the completion of the project’s first phase. The result is a green environment that integrates pedestrian and vehicular elements in a human-scaled, walkable environment. The landscape architecture is the tissue that connects and unifies the entire campus. At the core of the campus is the Park Green, a central tree-lined lawn modeled after historic Euclid Avenue, a major arterial in the City of Ontario.  The central space, similar to a “campus quad” model, is the heart of the project around which all building amenities, vehicular circulation, and pedestrian walks are organized.  The Park Green offers space for passive activities, as well as highly programmed community events.

A 36-foot-wide bioswale, a significant element of the site plan, was built along the campus perimeter. The bio-swale receives all of the site’s surface run-off, channeling it through a community of water- and drought-tolerant plants and dry riverbed conditions, which provide a “first flush” filtering before delivering it to several large retention ponds on site. Only in the event of a 100-year storm event does the system rely on the region’s storm water collection system to handle overflow.  This progressive method for handling surface run-off and providing ground water recharge is anticipated to be the future standard adopted by the City of Ontario.

Phase I of this campus, which includes a surgery center, medical office building with radiation therapy rooms off of a sunken outdoor courtyard, and a central plant, now provides the surrounding community with much needed medical services in modern, state-of-the-art facilities.

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