Park Space Falls Short in Santa Ana

SANTA ANA —  After a few pitches of baseball in the middle of Sycamore Street with some of the younger kids on the block, 16-year-old Luis Garcia is ready for another game.

“Let’s go play handball,” he tells a friend, 15-year-old Jose Mendoza.

Their court, it turns out, is the locked front door of a Catholic school auditorium just a short walk away. Without readily accessible parks, the city’s youth invent their own playing fields.

In Santa Ana, every patch of green space has become a precious commodity. Fields designed for softball games are quickly snatched up for soccer matches as soon as there is an opening. And freshly planted grass turns back to dirt within three months because the parks are overused.

“The town really does not have any breathing space in the central area,” said David A. Wilcox, a member of a consulting team that recently surveyed the city’s parks needs. “We have to create some breathing space. And we’re not just talking about trees, we’re talking about places where people can come together to socialize.”

When Wilcox and project partner Raul Escobedo presented the results of their study during a meeting of the city’s parks board, they had to mention only once the recent events in South Los Angeles to make their point:

Unless Santa Ana creates seven new parks and community centers in the core of the city, and unless it expands eight others and meets the increasing demand for community services, the city faces the onset of an urban ghetto.

Given the city’s recent population boom, which is expected to continue through this decade, the parks problem will only worsen unless something is done.

“It is imperative,” the report states, “to recognize that there is a dramatic real need to develop new parks within existing urbanized areas of the city as a first priority.”

Seven new parks, each about five acres in size, are recommended for the area bounded by 17th and Fairview streets, and Standard and Warner avenues, where residents generally do not have a neighborhood park within a half-mile.

And when the study zeroed in on the core of the city--neighborhoods located within 1st, Main and Bristol streets and Warner Avenue--”there literally are no parks,” Escobedo told the parks board.

The area in question is home to most of the city’s children under 18. It is where a majority of Latinos and recent immigrants have settled, and where small but affordable apartments are crammed with anywhere from four to seven low-income residents.

Implementing the new parks plan will be a formidable task, officials concede.

Aside from the cost, which has not yet been calculated, the city will have to demolish existing residences and relocate about 240 to 360 people for each new park that is developed.

And if the plan is to succeed, the consultants added, the political resolve must be found to ensure that priorities are not rearranged.

“If you only settle for expanding the existing parks,” Wilcox said, “you will never meet the need.”

He said the park space problem dates back to the 1920s, when officials “built out” the city without consideration for the development of parks in the inner areas.

By 1990, when the population surpassed 293,000, overcrowding had set in. Planners estimate there are 10,800 people living in each square mile of the city.

Instead of meeting the city’s stated goal of two acres of park and recreation space for every 1,000 residents, the expanded population brought the ratio down to 1.2 acres. The 33 city parks and a handful of jointly maintained school playgrounds, covering 347 acres of land, have become overburdened.

Even if the number of parks is increased and 75 new acres are developed, the consultants estimate that at best, the amount of green space for every 1,000 residents will remain the same, because the city is expected to grow by another 75,000 by the end of the decade.

Allen E. Doby, the city’s director of Recreation and Community Services, said the findings confirmed what the parks staff has known for some time.

“It is really nothing new to the staff,” he said. “It validated what we have been doing here.”

It is also obvious to parents such as Marilu Uriostegui, who drives her two youngest daughters three miles away from their Washington Square home to Madison Park once a week. She goes in the middle of the week, she says, when the park is less crowded.

Clutching her shoulder bag with one arm, she uses her free hand to help her daughter build momentum on one of two swings available at the park.

“They have bicycles,” she said, “but they don’t use them, really, because there are no parks and there’s too much traffic.”

On Pomona Street, an ice-cream truck drives on the left side of the street to avoid hitting Abel Aranda, 17, who is using the pavement in front of his house to rehearse lasso tricks for an upcoming charreada, a Mexican rodeo.

Nearby, Carlos Navarrete, a 25-year neighborhood resident, points to the broken wooden slats on a fence surrounding a vacant lot that has become a backstop for teen-agers practicing their baseball pitches.

“We don’t mind,” Navarrete said, “as long as they are having fun and staying out of trouble.”

And on Sycamore Street, where skateboards, bicycles and a Frisbee mix with the wild baseball pitches in the middle of the street, 11-year-old Jose Rojas said he would rather play in the street than cross a busy intersection and walk several blocks away to the closest park to his home.

“We don’t want to go all the way to Madison” Park, he said. “It’s too crowded and it’s too far.”

To meet the increasing demand, the city’s parks board approved the recommendations made by the consultants. They include:

* The development of the new parks and recreation facilities totaling 35 acres at seven different locations, including four sites where the Santa Ana Unified School District is planning new schools.

* The addition of 40 acres at eight existing parks, including Jerome Park, Delhi Park, Santa Anita Park, Campesino Park, Portola Park, El Salvador Park, Prentice Park and Madison Park.

* The installation of recreation centers at existing parks. The consultants credit the city with providing a solid base of services, including “well baby” clinics, senior citizen programs, English as a Second Language classes and soccer leagues. They suggested that the programs be expanded as the park system grows, not just to serve the community, but also to enhance the assimilation of different ethnic groups.

* Increased staffing to reach out into the neighborhoods and “redevelop the tradition of the neighborhood park as a social and recreational location.” Additional park rangers are also recommended, to erase any perception that parks are unsafe.

“If you get more children and their parents, now you have got more eyes, you have more use of the parks,” Escobedo said, adding that gang members will then stay away. “People will begin to safeguard the parks.”

Wilcox said that at some neighborhood meetings, people expressed concern about overuse of the parks by “outsiders.”

“Sometimes people think other people are outsiders coming in,” Wilcox said. “They just don’t know them. They don’t know they have moved into the neighborhood.”

If the goals are met, he said, the result will be not just more green space, but a greater understanding among people as different cultures begin to merge.

Escobedo added: “It would be great to get some kind of cultural exchange at different parks. We have to learn from the past. We have to build bridges.”

Greening of a City

The city of Santa Ana might acquire seven new parks and expand eight existing ones if a recently completed study’s recommendations are undertaken. Proposed sites for new parks and expansions: Proposed New Parks 1. Bristol Street and McFadden Avenue 2. Flower Street and Richland Avenue 3. Main and Pomona streets 4. Sullivan Street and Willits Avenue 5. Near Willard Intermediate School 6. Near proposed Transport Center, French Street 7. Near proposed Transport Center, Garfield School

Existing Parks (Parks proposed for expansion are listed with an asterisk.) 1. Friendship 2. Logan 3. French 4. Birch 5. Flower 6. Edna 7. Spurgeon 8. Delhi* 9. Fisher 10. Morrison 11. Santa Anita* 12. Campesino* 13. Mabury 14. Adams 15. Madison* 16. Griset 17. Sandpointe 18. Rosita 19. Cabrillo 20. Heritage 21. Alona 22. Portola* 23. Lillie King 24. El Salvador* 25. Bomo Koral 26. Windsor 27. Jerome* 28. Santa Ana Memorial 29. Santiago 30. Carl Thornton 31. Centennial 32. Prentice* 33. Center

Source: City of Santa Ana