Ontario Sports Park

About the Project

Providing full technology design and construction administration services for the Ontario Sports Park in Ontario, CA, encompassing 18 athletic fields, 6 support buildings, a restroom facility, ticket booths, parking lots, and a parking structure. Telecommunications scope includes underground fiber infrastructure and copper distribution across the entire site. Audiovisual systems featured mass notification via high-powered speaker arrays, paging for championship fields, and AV distribution integration with a large video wall in the family gathering area. Security design—is being developed in coordination with the local police department—and includes surveillance cameras, remote talk-down capabilities, drone patrol integration, and full integration with the Axon system, with centralized monitoring from a security office equipped with a video wall. Construction administration includes full support and on-site coordination to meet an accelerated schedule.

Designing the Invisible: Technology Infrastructure at the Ontario Sports Empire

By Jarrett Mui, Director of Technology, Design West Engineering

The best technology in a building is the kind no one notices. At the Ontario Sports Empire, a major multi-sport campus currently under construction in the Inland Empire, that was the goal from the start.

Design West Engineering’s Technology team was brought on to design the telecommunications, audiovisual, and security systems for the campus. The scope was significant: a fiber-first communications network spanning thousands of feet across a complex, multi-building site, designed to support Wi-Fi 7, audiovisual systems, security, access control, digital signage, drone operations, and technologies that do not yet exist.

Rethinking the Network From the Ground Up

The original design called for approximately 108 intermediate distribution frames (IDFs) scattered across the campus. That approach would have worked, but it would have created a long-term maintenance and operational burden that the owner would carry for decades.

We redesigned the campus around a simpler, more resilient model: one primary IDF per building supported by nine strategically located exterior telecommunications enclosures. A robust fiber backbone connects everything, with copper used only for the final connection to individual devices. The result is a network that is easier to manage, less costly to operate, and ready to scale as technology evolves.

Engineering Around What Is Already There

Designing the underground infrastructure meant routing thousands of feet of conduit around mature trees, landscaping, roadways, existing utilities, and planned future development, without sacrificing constructability or long-term serviceability. Joining the project after significant design work was already complete added another layer of complexity: every decision had to integrate cleanly into an evolving architectural and site plan.

That kind of constraint-driven design is where coordination becomes as important as engineering. Every system, every conduit path, every enclosure location was resolved through constant collaboration across disciplines.

An Audio Experience Built for Community

One of the decisions that will matter most to visitors is one they will never consciously make: the outdoor audio experience. Early project discussions focused on minimizing AV scope to control costs. The DWE Technology team advocated for a distributed audio system designed to create a seamless immersive environment across the campus, similar to what makes destinations like Downtown Disney feel alive without any single speaker drawing attention to itself.

Whether families are attending a youth tournament, a community event, or a live performance, the goal was for the technology to enhance the atmosphere rather than simply satisfy a functional requirement. The best AV systems are the ones people feel, not the ones they see.

Built for Generations

Visitors to the Ontario Sports Empire will connect to Wi-Fi, hear announcements, watch performances, and move through a secure campus without thinking about the infrastructure that makes any of it possible. That is exactly the point. The miles of fiber beneath the site, the coordinated conduit pathways, the carefully reduced IDF count: none of it is visible. All of it matters.

Good technology design is not just about solving today’s problems. It is about building systems that quietly support communities and adapt to whatever comes next.