Montclair Bet Its Housing Plans on a Train the County Just Defunded
September 3, 2026
September 3, 2026
"We are moving into construction on the Pomona to Claremont segment thanks to Metro's unwavering investment and partnership," Foothill Gold Line board chair Ed Reece said in January 2026. "However, our eyes remain fixed on the finish line: Montclair."
That finish line has been the plan since 2012, when the state legislature passed Assembly Bill 1600 and named the Montclair Transcenter the official eastern terminus of the Gold Line. It's still the plan today. What changed, in the span of about nine months, is the county partner responsible for paying to get the train the last mile into Montclair walked away from the table, and the city's own housing paperwork landed it on the Governor's list of jurisdictions violating state law. Meanwhile, the apartment buildings that were supposed to be justified by that train kept getting built, on schedule, with or without it.
If you're comparing Montclair to Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, or Chino Hills as a place to buy, this is the part the median price won't tell you. Montclair's identity as a transit-oriented city and the actual arrival of transit have quietly come apart. Understanding why matters more than the zoning map.
Montclair has spent more than two decades building its planning documents around a train station that doesn't exist yet. The North Montclair Downtown Specific Plan, adopted in 2006, set out to create between 2,800 and 3,200 dwelling units and roughly 700,000 square feet of commercial space around the future Gold Line stop. A 2017 amendment raised the ceiling to 5,888 units. In 2020, the city council unanimously adopted the Montclair Place District Specific Plan, a 20-year vision for the mall site and surrounding property that allows up to 5,900 housing units, 512,000 square feet of commercial space, and a hotel of 100 to 200 rooms across 104 acres, with buildings ranging from five to 20 stories. City officials now describe Montclair as leading the Inland Empire in transit-oriented housing, with more than 11,900 units planned across its specific plans, and city manager Edward Starr has pointed to an estimated $100 million the city has invested in transit-related infrastructure over the years.
That's the pitch. The problem is the transit half of transit-oriented development is the half Montclair doesn't control.
The San Bernardino County Transportation Authority is the agency responsible for funding the roughly one-mile Claremont-to-Montclair segment, the final leg that would actually bring light rail into the city. Here's what happened once the rest of the Gold Line extension started moving:
Read straight through, that's a funding partner exiting, a lawsuit, a legislative attempt to force the issue, and a construction contract that confirms the train is moving forward everywhere except the one city that built its entire downtown plan around it.
None of this slowed private capital. The residential pipeline inside the North Montclair Downtown Specific Plan area has moved on its own timeline for over a decade, regardless of what the transit agencies were arguing about.
Paseos at Montclair North, a 385-unit development, held its grand opening in October 2013, the first residential project in the specific plan area. Alexan Kendry, a 211-unit community from Trammell Crow Residential built one block from the Montclair Metrolink station, won a 2021 Golden Nugget award for multifamily design. The Village at Montclair, a roughly six-acre, 350-unit mixed-use project designed by Torti Gallas and Partners with its own town square and retail shops, had several of its four buildings open by the end of 2025, according to the city's own annual newsletter. And Trammell Crow's third Montclair development, a 302-unit project known as The Marlowe or Alexan Marlowe, broke ground in July 2024 with partial leasing expected in the second quarter of 2026 and full completion targeted for early 2027.
That's four separate market-rate developments, roughly 1,250 units total, delivered or delivering between 2013 and 2027, entirely independent of whether the Gold Line ever reaches Montclair. The density that "transit-oriented" was supposed to justify is arriving anyway. It just isn't waiting on the transit.
The same month Assemblyman Harabedian was maneuvering to force the county's hand on rail funding, Montclair ran into a separate problem with the state. On March 24, 2026, the California Department of Housing and Community Development issued a Notice of Violation to Montclair and 14 other cities and counties for failing to adopt a compliant sixth-cycle housing element, a deadline that had technically been due since October 15, 2021. Governor Newsom's office named Montclair specifically in its public list that week, alongside cities including Half Moon Bay and Turlock, and noted that violators face fines between $10,000 and $50,000 a month if the state or Attorney General pursues enforcement.
Montclair's own account is that the delay came from a genuinely complicated sequence: a concurrent General Plan update, a March 2025 HCD review that flagged rezoning gaps tied to the city's Regional Housing Needs Assessment obligations, and an October 2025 appellate ruling in a Redondo Beach case that added new requirements mid-process. The city council adopted an urgency ordinance on April 20, 2026, aiming to have its housing element in effect by June 2026, and city officials maintain the violation notice mischaracterizes a city that already operates 112 units of low- to moderate-income housing through the Montclair Housing Corporation and holds 30-year affordability covenants on roughly 400 mobile home park units through Augusta Homes.
Whichever telling you find more persuasive, the practical point is the same. The zoning capacity that lets Montclair claim 11,900 planned units is itself being renegotiated with the state at the same time the rail funding that supposedly justifies that density is being renegotiated with the county. Both halves of "transit-oriented development" were in active dispute in the same six-month window.
The lesson for a buyer isn't that Montclair is a bad bet. It's that the two things people bundle together when they hear "transit-oriented" have come apart here, and they need to be evaluated on their own terms.
If you're weighing Montclair because you want near-term light rail access to Pasadena or downtown Los Angeles, don't price that in on any specific timeline. The county funding partner has already walked away once, the legislative fix to force the issue is opposed by that same partner, and the construction contract that just got awarded stops one city short of where you'd be living.
If instead you're weighing Montclair because the density and walkability are changing regardless, that part of the story checks out. Village at Montclair's town square is real and largely open. The Marlowe is leasing in the coming months. More multifamily supply is coming whether the train arrives in 2028, later, or not at all, which means more rental competition and more retail activity near North Montclair over the next two years is a safer assumption than a rail-adjacent price premium.
Separating those two questions, instead of assuming they move together, is the difference between reading a specific plan the way the city's marketing wants you to and reading it the way an actual buyer should.
Will the Gold Line ever reach Montclair? As of the most recent construction contract award in May 2026, the funded and contracted portion of the extension ends at Claremont. Montclair's city council continues to pursue legal claims against SBCTA and supported a state legislative attempt to force construction of the final segment, but that bill was opposed by the very county agency that would need to help fund it. There's no adopted timeline for Montclair's own station at this point, and prior planning documents that assumed a near-term opening have already been pushed back once before, from an earlier 2026 target to no sooner than 2028 in an older construction phasing scenario.
If you're weighing a purchase in Montclair, Chino, Upland, or anywhere else in the Inland Empire where a city's marketing and its actual infrastructure timeline don't quite line up, that's exactly the kind of local detail worth working through with someone who follows these plans as they change, not just the finished version a listing sheet shows you. Lily Valdivia has been licensed in California since 2010 and works across Upland, Montclair, and the broader Inland Empire with buyers who want the full picture before they commit. Let's Connect.
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