SANTA ANA : Downtown Area’s Fate to Be Studied

The aging buildings along Main Street and Broadway were once part of a bustling financial center with banks, stock brokerages and insurance firms. Now many stand vacant, waiting for the return of boom times that may never come.

Beginning at noon today in the abandoned Chandler furniture showroom at 1104 N. Main St., residents, city officials and a volunteer urban design team of architects and planners will begin a weekend-long effort to define the future of the neighborhood, located between Civic Center Drive and 17th Street.

The effort will start with lunch provided by the city, followed by two hours of briefings by city officials and then a two-hour tour of the neighborhood, said architect Ron Baers, one of a group of volunteer architects. About 15 to 25 architects will participate in the project during the weekend and present ideas and designs at 5 p.m. Sunday.

“We expect some reinforcements to show up Sunday morning to help with the final drawings,” said Baers, who is directing the team with architect David Baab.

The public is invited to attend throughout the weekend, Baers said.

Santa Ana’s Community Development Agency requested the help of the volunteer group, named the Regional Urban Design Assistance Team and sponsored by the American Institute of Architects, Orange County chapter. The group will also include USC architecture students who live in the project area. “The site was a major banking center at one time,” Baers said, “but it’s not clear what the future role of that area ought to be. Whether the city can recapture that (financial center status) is a basic question being asked.”

A similar effort by the urban design team last September involving Tustin’s old-town area resulted in a series of drawings and recommendations adopted last month by the Tustin City Council.

Among its recommendations, the design team urged the city to make the old town a festival center that would host “all major civic activities” and “reinforce the area’s role as the heart of the community.”

As part of this plan, Peppertree Park would be redesigned as a “central city park with group picnicking areas, a band shell and other facilities that will make it a useful large-scale gathering and events place.”