Poll: Should we finish the Santiago Creek bike trail in Fisher Park?

The disaster that is Fisher Park’s stretch of Santiago Creek

UPDATE: Now YOU can vote to support the completion of the portion of the Santiago Creek bike trail that runs through Santa Ana’s Fisher Park neighborhood.  Click here to vote!

Did the Fisher Park NIMBYs who are blocking the completion of the Santiago Creek bike trail ruin their own neighborhood?  It is a fair question to ask.

If you visit the Santiago Creek bike train in Santiago Park – or over at the Santiago Park Nature Reserve, you won’t see the horrible graffiti that is sprayed all over the place in the Fisher Park Neighborhood.  Sure, you will find isolated tagging, but nothing like the disaster at Fisher Park.

And now, according to my sources, the Fisher Park NIMBYs, led by Rancho Santiago Community College District Trustee Mark McLaughlin and Chapman University Professor Paul Apodaca, want to fence off their part of the creek altogether – as if that will be some sort of panacea!  It will only make things worse.

Don’t take my word for it – compare the picture above this paragraph to the one atop this post, and then check out the slideshow at this link.  That is the mess at the Fisher Park portion of Santiago Creek – a self-inflected nightmare.  The cops cannot patrol the area.  Bike riders cannot ride through there.  All you have is gang bangers and other criminals – and they would not be there if the trail was completed as it is in Santiago Park – and in Hart Park, over in Orange.

Here is what you will see at the Santiago Park portion of the Santiago Creek bike trails (the one on the north is paved while the one on the south side of the creek is just dirt.

Fisher Park

Santiago Park

 The Santiago Creek Greenway Alliance has been working for many years to create a greenway along the Santiago Creek.  They have a plan that you can read by clicking here.  The plan is almost done – except for the small portion of Santiago Creek at Fisher Park, where the NIMBYs seem incapable of doing the right thing.

Art Pedroza Editor
Our Editor, Art Pedroza, worked at the O.C. Register and the OC Weekly and studied journalism at CSUF and UCI. He has lived in Santa Ana for over 30 years and has served on several city and county commissions. When he is not writing or editing Pedroza specializes in risk control and occupational safety. He also teaches part time at Cerritos College and CSUF. Pedroza has an MBA from Keller University.
Art Pedroza

Our Editor, Art Pedroza, worked at the O.C. Register and the OC Weekly and studied journalism at CSUF and UCI. He has lived in Santa Ana for over 30 years and has served on several city and county commissions. When he is not writing or editing Pedroza specializes in risk control and occupational safety. He also teaches part time at Cerritos College and CSUF. Pedroza has an MBA from Keller University.

View Comments

  • Funny how you were so against Tom Gordon's anti-graffiti efforts but complain about eyesores like this.

    • Well, how did Gordon's anti-graffiti ordinance work out? You know, the one that is unenforceable?

      The issue here is that the Fisher Park NIMBYs won't allow the trail to be completed and they won't allow clean up crews to clean up the mess. Those crews cannot get in there safely anyway with that rocky dirt trail.

      The disaster in Fisher Park is entirely self-inflicted by these addled NIMBYs.

  • You mean the city has mismanaged the budget so they can't replace street lights, clean up graffiti or fight gang violence. Gordon's ordinance is only unenforcable because the city chooses not to.

    • Gordon should understand why out city is broke. We owe 25 million a year in pension obligations. One day Gordon will retire from LA Unified and he too will be a burden on the taxpayers.

  • "The issue here is that the Fisher Park NIMBYs won’t allow the trail to be completed and they won’t allow clean up crews to clean up the mess."

    What AGAIN are you talking about?

    Please provide some VERIFIABLE FACTS that the "Fisher Park NIMBY'S" won't "allow" clean up crews.

    Santiago Creek is overseen by MANY DIFFERENT AGENCIES the County, the City, Fish and Game, Flood Control and probably the Army Corp of Engineers (who according to Jeff Dickman, are still planning to come in and IMPROVE the creek bed in 5 or so years, thus WASTING all of the bike trails money).

    The REAL TRUTH is that the city doesn't want to spend a nickel cleaning up the creek bed, just look at Jack Fisher Park, they NEVER trim the trees because they want it to look like a "forest", yet when trees fall down or die they are NEVER REPLACED and when they fall down in the creek they just leave them to rot.

    And as for the Fisher Park NIMBY'S not "allowing" a bike trail, the idiots behind the bike trail have presented a bunch of fantastical caca, they have no idea who owns what, where the trail would go, how much of the creek bed itself would have to be disrupted and built up, what that means to the path of the creek itself (i.e. flooding) and the financial ramifications of either buying private property or taking it by eminent domain and plus indemnifying the private property owners from lawsuits and NOWHERE do they show how their proposed bike trail would cut through Jack Fisher Park. In short they are presenting pie-in-the-sky and whining that the creek bed is privately owned and being blocked by a few bad guys.

    Furthermore if you had been living on a tree lined creek with just a few dozen hikers coming through everyday, how would you feel to be presented with a plan that is going to take your land, cut down all the trees, pave over the path and allow hundreds of bikers per day to stream through your backyard?

    It's ALWAYS easier to inflict the pain on some one else, yeah, easy for you to say; "build the bike path", YOU DON'T LIVE ON SANTIAGO CREEK!

  • The bike trail that goes by most of Jack fisher park is already built on Memory lane. From Bristol to Flower.

    The missing piece is between Flower and Broadway . A very small piece of 4 to 5 blocks. The 6 to 7 properties, 2 or more owners that have blocked the right of way, live in the Floral Park area. Not a single property owner in Jack Fisher park is involved with this creek bed land that A P is talking about.

    • cook,

      I looked at the neighborhood map. The stretch in question is clearly in the Fisher Park Neighborhood.

      Here is the map I mentioned:

      Note that the area marked "23" is the Fisher Park Neighborhood. Area "2" is Floral Park.

  • Thanks for thinking of me but I am already on holiday. Have a great Thanksgiving. Perhaps you can use your time off to ponder how you might best serve your community, instead of wasting your time writing angry blog comments.

  • I used to live just North of Jack Fisher Park & the Creek. Wow.. Seeing the Photos of now it seems like another Slum in SA. People used enjoy the Fisher Park and the creek everyday. Looks scary now.. So the Police Chief/ City Manager & the Mayor are stumped on what to do? Cut back on those city Fesitas and put those monies back into those nice neighborhoods.. If not.. It's the last of SA as a Family type City..

    • The answer my friend is simple. Pave the bike trail. Clear the overgrown brush and rocks. This will allow families and bicyclists to enjoy the path and that will keep the bad types out. That will also allow cops to patrol the area and clean-up crews to access the area, safely.

  • "You still don’t get it. That trail is a mess because that is how the NIMBYs want it."

    Wow, great answer, it's true because you BELIEVE it to be true, that's some ironclad proof.
    I know it is so much more fun for you Art, to lie and cast aspersions about these homeowners than it is to figure out the real reason the creek bed isn't being maintained, namely BUDGET CUTS.

    • Wrong again. After all these years you still don't know how things work in this town. The Nimby's wanted the rocks and the overgrown brush, thinking that would keep people out. It didn't. So they kept volunteer clean up crews out, so they could argue that now they need to fence the area off. It is so obvious.

  • No Art, the rock was brought in because when the freeway was being widened they graded away the property of the homeowner on NW side and the rock was how they "restored" his land.
    Again, what EVIDENCE do you have that these Nimby's some how conspired to keep clean up crews out of the creek bed? I've NEVER heard ANY such talk and I live on the creek.
    What IS obvious, is that you are making stuff up to suit your little conspiracy theories.

    • LOL! And it's just a coincidence that the rocks are right at the start of the trail, just past the 5 Freeway underpass ...

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