Sprinklers have been running for over 48 hours at the Santa Ana Lawn Bowling Center, which is located at Santiago Park, off of Memory Lane, despite the rainy weather. Members of the Park Santiago Neighborhood Association have tried calling any number that made sense, to no avail. They also called the Lawn Bowlers – who mostly don’t live in Santa Ana.
The entire Lawn Bowling Center was also left unlocked on Friday night as well. Continue reading
The director of the Santa Ana Parks and Recreation Agency, Gerardo Mouet, wants to use half of the current Santa Ana Lawn Bowling Center to make money by renting the area for weddings and the like. His department is broke and is trying desperately to come up with ways to increase funding.
I can understand that sentiment, but I think it is an awful idea. This is a unique, large space and we really need to think long and hard about how we can use it to most benefit our residents.
Lawn bowling clearly is a terrible use for this space. I recently spoke to a former Santa Ana Parks and Recreation Commissioner who informed me that at most perhaps two out of the 17 or so lawn bowlers who use the facility actually live here in Santa Ana. Most of them live in Anaheim, Garden Grove, Tustin and Fountain Valley.
Currently, the lawn bowling fields are locked up and unused a majority of the time. I am also told that the lawn bowlers have been trying to kill all the ground squirrels in the area. Not good.
It is past time to say adios to the lawn bowlers. If we are to locate the proposed City dog park at the current SAPD police dog training facility, I think we ought to think about using the lawn bowling area for a skate park on one side and a bmx field on the other side.
Paving over the grass would save our city a lot of water, and would reduce the amount of chemicals that are currently being used in that area.
Where would the money come from? I am told that a skate park designer lives over at the City Place, and he is willing to help us with this project. I believe this would be an ideal project to submit for federal CDBG grants – and we could also partner with existing non-profits.
Santa Ana is the youngest city in Orange County. Isn’t it time to do something great for our young people?
Now I am not naive. I expect push-back. Mouet lives in the Park Santiago Neighborhood. And he has expressed in the past that nothing will happen without consulting the Park Santiago Neighborhood Association. But why is that? They are not elected at large. They represent 1% of our neighborhood and their Board is not diverse.
Santiago Park is not just a neighborhood park. It is a huge park with a lot of distinct features and its is used by residents from all over our city. Mouet should consult with more than just a few busy bodies before making decisions about how this park is used.
Click here to contact the Santa Ana City Council. You can contact City Manager Dave Ream’s assistant, Mark Lawrence, at MLawrence@santa-ana.org.
I visited Costa Mesa’s Bark Park on Saturday, this weekend, and also visited the Irvine Central Bark Park. My goal was to find out how these facilities work, and whether or not folks are using them. As my readers know, I am proposed turning the little-used Lawn Bolwing Center, in Santa Ana’s Santiago Park, into our own dog park.
I found that the two parks had some similarities and a few differences.
Both parks were hopping with dogs and their owners. Just as I figured, the dog park concept is HUGE. There is a lot of demand. I spoke to dog owners at both parks. They all indicated that they use the facility regularly. Some of them come there daily! I also asked all of them if they ever heard of lawn bowling. Only one retired fellow had ever heard of it, out of some forty people that I spoke to.
Costa Mesa’s park is run by a community non-profit organization. It opened in 1994. Here is the rundown from their website: Continue reading
Wouldn’t the Santa Ana Lawn Bowling Center make a nice Dog Park?
Did you know that the City of Santa Ana has no dog parks? I called today and spoke with a lady at the City of Santa Ana’s dog license department. She was very helpful!
She said that we have 11,835 dogs currently licensed in our city. And she figures there might be even more dogs that are currently unlicensed. While I have questioned the cost of our licenses in the past, they do accomplish a couple of positive goals, in that they help to assure that dogs are properly vaccinated – and that they are fixed.
The lady at the dog license department also told me that the only dog park in the area is in Costa Mesa – and they don’t like it when out of town residents bring their dogs to their park, as it is hard to corroborate that the dogs are fixed and vaccinated.
I have an idea for a dog park, in Santa Ana, at NO COST to our city! The Lawn Bowling center, at Santiago Park, is only used four times a week. Gerardo Mouet, the Santa Ana Parks and Recreation Director, verified this today in an email I received. “The Lawn Bowlers practice on the bowling area on Tuesdays and Thursdays and play on the weekends.” Continue reading
I visited Santa Ana’s Santiago Park again this weekend, on Sunday, Feb. 14. I wanted to see if indeed the brush had been cleared. It was also my intention to follow up on what Santa Ana Police Department Chief Paul Walters told me last week, about his department’s increased effort to arrest perpetrators of lewd conduct.
On the positive side, the wildflowers are blooming. And yes, much of the shrubbery and trash has been cleared. And while I was there I observed a Santa Ana park ranger, checking the area.
On the negative side, I was aghast at the explosion in graffiti at the park. You will see all of that in the slide show above. I also found numerous condom wrappers. How long they have been there is a mystery, but they were on the south side of the river, not far from the eastern playground at the park. Continue reading
