Denise Entner moved to the Inland Empire last year to get more house for her money. But the commute from Upland to her job in Orange County, sometimes nearly two hours each way, was no bargain.
Fortunately, Entner landed a health care management position in Ontario that cut her commute to 20 minutes, giving her more time with her husband and three sons.
"Now I'm able to cook dinner and we eat at home together," she said. "I'm also saving $200 a month on gas and my car insurance payments dropped 18%."
The Inland Empire's era as just a quiet bedroom community is ending.
The region, often seen as a manufacturing and transportation hub, with less-expensive homes for those willing to commute to Los Angeles and Orange counties, is rapidly moving beyond its blue-collar roots into a more urbane future.
Increasingly, Western Riverside and San Bernardino counties are featuring the type of upscale houses, stores and entertainment long found in Los Angeles and other coastal enclaves. White-collar professionals such as Entner are finding attractive jobs there, no longer commuting westward. Tall office buildings are sprouting, along with more $1-million-plus homes.
The region's median income now surpasses that of Los Angeles County. It is creating more jobs than Orange and San Diego counties are creating put together. Riverside and San Bernardino counties boast more residents than Oregon.
"The L.A. dream still exists, it just moved east," said Joel Kotkin, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation who writes frequently about California. "Ontario is transitioning into what Los Angeles once was, with both white collar and blue collar."
The Inland Empire, said Kotkin, "is keeping Southern California from really hollowing out its middle class. It captures people before they would head to Arizona or Nevada" for more affordable living.
While the region's Coachella Valley towns, such as Palm Springs and Indian Wells, have long sported pricey housing for the well-to-do, top drawer residences are now popping up in rapidly urbanizing Inland Empire neighborhoods just east of Los Angeles County.
For instance, the median home price is $780,000 in Chino Hills, a prosperous bedroom community on the western edge of San Bernardino County. The median income of the city's 75,000 residents surpasses that of Beverly Hills.
Perhaps nowhere is the region's economic evolution more evident than in Ontario.
