With construction finishing up on the APU/Citrus College station, Foothill Gold Line is now looking forward to the 12.3-mile extension from Azusa to Montclair. The extension will feature a station in Glendora, San Dimas, La Verne, Pomona, Claremont and Montclair.
All locations for the stations and their corresponding parking structures were selected by the cities and approved as part of the environmental review process in March 2013.
The stations will use a standard design in order to maintain a unified look between all Gold Line stations. Every station has an artist that is selected to add the art design aspect to give each one a unique look.
Michael Hillman, Citrus faculty, was selected in 2005 to be the station artist for the city of Glendora. Hillman’s concept design for the Glendora station will be centered on the history of Glendora and draws inspiration from various city features.
The process to select the artist for the station in the current extension of the Gold Line began in 2005. Every city that has a station selects their artist through city-appointed Station Design and Art Review Committees. The SDAR committee reviews all the resumes of the applying artists and recommend an artist to their respective city officials.
“We conducted a national search and it was a request for qualifications,” said Lesley Elwood, Public Art Program Manager. “Each city formed their own Station Design and Art Review committee. Those people shortlisted three candidates and each one of those candidates developed a preliminary design concept. Based on that, that is how the finalist were selected.”
The design will feature large columns near the station platforms with designs of the foothills, brodiaea filifolia and bougainvillea, which is a State Historical landmark, that stretches along Bennett Ave. and Minnesota Ave.
“One of the things that is only specific to Glendora is we have the largest stand of Bougainvillea in the United States,” Hillman. “It was planted in 1908 so it’s more than 100 years old. So that became one of the primary sources of inspiration for the design of the Gold Line station I’m developing.”
The columns will be done in glass tesserae. Cuerda seca tiles will be used for the stair risers that will feature the same concept as the columns. One of the most interesting features of the station will be the design used in the parking facility’s elevator shaft and station platform.
“I’m going to take the canopy that will be over the platform and I’m going to do it in color glass so when you look up, it’s like you are looking through this bougainvillea arbor,” Hillman said. “We’re going to take the elevator and cap the top in glass that will be a beacon or lantern for the city that you can see from half-a-mile away.
The extension is currently in the advance engineering stage, the final process before construction begins. The Construction Authority is seeking roughly $1 billion in construction funding to build the extension.
“The way this project is going to get funded is going to be a sales tax initiative on the ballot on November 2016,” said Habib Balian, Foothill Extension Construction Authority CEO. “There will be a list of hundreds of projects with about eight rail projects and will raise about $40 billon over 30 years. It will increase your sales tax about a half-cent and it will fund all of these projects.”
Construction is expected to take approximately five years. They are projecting to break ground in 2017.
