Stating Their Case for Floral Park

Re “Oasis to Be Envied,” Dec. 1:

A resident of Santa Ana is quoted as saying of Floral Park, “You can hardly figure out a way to get into the neighborhood. It’s like it’s off-limits to certain people.”

Oh, please. This is the same lazy-minded whine that surfaces every time a Santa Ana neighborhood tries to reduce cut-through commuter traffic. Flower Street, a major north-south arterial, runs straight into Floral Park. Drivers (of any ethnicity or economic status) can get into that neighborhood in half a dozen ways.

Modern housing tracts are laid out in circles and cul-de-sacs, with only a few entry points. Santa Ana’s streets, laid out more than 100 years ago, don’t benefit from current civic planning, so the same purpose is accomplished by street narrowing and closures. No nefarious, secret motives here ... just a desire for quiet residential streets. The race-baiting hatemongers need to find a new reason for opposing Santa Ana’s revitalization ... this one just doesn’t hold up.

Paul D. Giles

President, Historic French Park Neighborhood Assn.

Santa Ana

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I live in Floral Park, and this is not a “largely white” neighborhood. In fact, the racial demographics are only slightly different from Santa Ana as a whole. There are no “traffic barricades.” North Flower Street, for example is a major cut-through for Orange and Garden Grove residents working or having business in the Civic Center area just one mile south. The traffic diverters just keep people moving in an orderly fashion. No streets are blocked at all -- you just have to enter a different way than you might look to exit. This is similar to cul-de-sacs in the cookie-cutter suburbs.

Unlike some of our neighbors, my family supports the much-needed school soon to be built near our home. The neighborhood never “went to court” to block the school.

Floral Park is just one of the better known of Santa Ana’s historical neighborhoods. Many of us who live there are users of the entire city. We love the diversity, the culture and the lack of tract homes. We also want what all county residents want: quality of life. If that means rerouting traffic so it is more difficult to cut through, it’s no different from most O.C. communities.

What should have been a positive piece about a historic neighborhood in a reputation-challenged city of many, was not.

Howard O. Kieffer

Santa Ana

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As a resident of Floral Park, I would like to defend my neighborhood from the negative comments contained in the article “Oasis to Be Envied.” Envy is an ugly quality. Floral Park is a beautiful neighborhood because its residents work hard to maintain and enhance it, and they take pride in their homes and its streets. Instead of criticizing the community, others should be imitating it. So what if nothing seems out of place? Is that a bad thing? It seems the detractors would be happier if there were shopping carts and trash littering the streets. That’s not how I want my neighborhood to look.

Santiago Martin

Santa Ana