Santa Ana Addresses Its Image Problem : Municipalities: A city associated with gang violence wants the public to see its good points. An artists village is one step.

This city faces such problems as crime and overcrowded housing, but the reaction of one top official to the menus and business cards at a swank new steakhouse shows few problems seem small these days.

When David N. Ream recently was tipped off by a City Council member that the business cards and menus for Morton’s of Chicago list the restaurant’s location as Costa Mesa, Ream sent a letter to restaurant headquarters in Chicago pointing out that the eatery is in South Coast Plaza Village in Santa Ana. Ream asked Morton’s to correct the “error.”

But Morton’s response--and a similar problem last year with the new Planet Hollywood nightspot--underscores a lingering problem for Santa Ana: It needs to beef up its image.

The restaurant balked at changing the address, saying Costa Mesa is a more readily known and attractive name because of the huge South Coast Plaza next-door.

“I’m not gonna mess with something that works,” said Wendy Aiello of Morton’s, adding that the Orange County restaurant, which opened about a year ago, is one of the chain’s busiest.

One more battle lost in the city’s effort to burnish its reputation.

These are sensitive times for city officials, who are bracing for more bad PR by year’s end: The city might set a record for gang killings. There have been 43 such homicides this year, two more than last year. The all-time high was 48, set in 1993.

For city officials, crime statistics are widely open to interpretation.

They would prefer to note that neighbor Anaheim,, which has 30,000 fewer people than Santa Ana’s 310,000, reported about 500 more serious crimes such as homicide, rape and robbery than Santa Ana. But Anaheim hardly can complain that people fret a visit there.

Still, Santa Ana is home to an estimated 10,000 gang members, and 75% of the county’s gang-related crimes occur within the city.

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City officials lay much of the blame for the image problem on the gang statistics. They say they can only do what many other beleaguered cities seek to do: try to attract more businesses through enterprise zones, cut crime through gang sweeps and educational programs and maybe hope their neighbors stumble a bit.

Ream--who lives in the upscale, South County community of Coto de Caza part time for personal reasons, he says--believes that Santa Ana will turn the corner only when other cities in the county get built out and lose their suburban flavor.

When that occurs, he said, “the contrast [with Santa Ana] won’t be as great.”

Councilwoman Lisa Mills said the city needs to make a name for itself in something other than crime. “Costa Mesa has South Coast Plaza,” she said. “Anaheim has Disneyland.”

So Mills has backed the city-sponsored downtown Artists Village--a cluster of private and public buildings where artists can live, produce and sell their works.

“There may be a lot of people who don’t agree with me” about using the arts, Mills said. “But it’s a start.”

Diann Marsh, the city’s unofficial historian, also believes that the arts will be the city’s entree to a better reputation, and cites the recent influx of dozens of artists drawn by the Artists Village.

“The potential is there to change people’s minds,” Marsh said, “to make them feel like they want to come to Santa Ana for arts and culture.”

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It was not always a struggle to attract people and money to Santa Ana.

Marsh, 60, recalled moving to north Tustin with her parents in 1952 when Santa Ana, along with Anaheim, were the in places to shop. But Marsh said the city started to decline in the 1960s.

As the longtime owners of the city’s elaborate houses died, the buildings were converted to multifamily dwellings. The influx of renters and transient occupants, in turn, brought more people into the city with a decreased stake in its future.

Marsh, however, said the city began a turnaround in the 1980s with the rise of neighborhood associations. In some cases, they pushed to keep apartment buildings out of neighborhoods of single-family homes, or at least ensure that they met strict building and architectural standards.

Also hurting the city is its age--109 years old--when compared with much younger cities that have newer housing and a more modern infrastructure.

“Santa Ana is large,” Marsh said. “It’s a city. It’s not a village. We have a lot of cultural things. We have a real, historic downtown. So you have to take the bad with the good.”

With such sensitivities, it’s easy to see why the perceived slights by Morton’s and Planet Hollywood touched a raw nerve.

“We need people to know that good businesses such as Morton’s are in Santa Ana in order to boost the city’s image,” Councilwoman Mills said. “But those businesses won’t admit to being in Santa Ana.”

Planet Hollywood President Frank DiBella said that with a nod to accuracy, he now sells T-shirts listing the restaurant’s location as South Coast Plaza Village and Santa Ana, rather than Costa Mesa. He said he did not intend to distance his restaurant from Santa Ana; Costa Mesa just has better name recognition.

“Not too many people know where Santa Ana is,” he said.