Still Something Between Them

Gathering in a parlor, residents from three adjoining but distinct Santa Ana neighborhoods struggled to resolve a lingering dispute.

The meeting in French Park, a swath of 160 historic Victorian and craftsman homes near downtown Santa Ana, was organized to discuss the use of barriers to block commuters from taking shortcuts to the Santa Ana Freeway.

The meetings began six months ago because of growing tension over the barriers, which were removed last month. But because the barriers may return, residents continue to discuss their effect -- not just on traffic, but on neighborhood relations.

It is a hot-button issue because, unlike master-planned communities designed to funnel traffic along major thoroughfares, Santa Ana’s older neighborhoods are absorbing more traffic as motorists avoid congested main streets.

But the use of barriers -- whether a waist-high concrete wall, concrete islands or steel chains -- to prevent motorists from passing through residential neighborhoods has caused hard feelings. Clinging to the debate is the uncomfortable question of whether residents of French Park are trying to isolate themselves from their less-affluent neighbors.

Barriers at three intersections are the traffic control of choice in French Park, a magnet for mostly white professionals who have moved from elsewhere and for many of whom restoring old homes is an avocation.

The barriers are opposed by residents of two adjoining neighborhoods with sizable working class Latino populations -- Logan, which comprises modest homes scattered around a crematorium, the plant of the city’s trash hauler and other industrial buildings, and French Court, with its condominiums and apartments.

The barriers “made me feel that French Park had a long, thought-out plan to make their neighborhood more exclusive,” Wade Little, a French Court resident, said at the recent neighborhood meeting. “I had the sense of being walled off.”

His remarks were followed by an uncomfortable silence; participants had been asked by a mediator to digest comments quietly.

The barriers reminded another French Court resident of how, years earlier, the Rio Grande separated him from a better life. “You would look at the other side [of the barriers] the way I looked at El Paso from Mexico as a kid,” said Leo Sarinana.

More strained silence followed.

After another speaker invoked images of the Berlin Wall, French Park resident Paul Giles cringed and broke the quiet. “I don’t think we like [the barriers] being compared to the Berlin Wall,” he said.

The dialogue played out over cake and coffee, with a big mutt and tabby cat soothingly pressing themselves against the visitors’ legs, and there was no ignoring the presence of a specially trained facilitator from the Orange County Human Relations Commission.

This was, in fact, the most recent of six monthly meetings held by the facilitator to improve relations among residents of the three neighborhoods.

The commission was asked to intervene earlier this year, because tensions were obvious on both sides of the barriers.

As residents ran into each other -- at City Hall and in courtrooms -- they barely acknowledged one another’s presence, exchanging steely glances.

Without the facilitator, both sides said they were too angry to try to understand the other’s views, much less compromise.

Under the control of facilitator Iliana Soto, the participants sat almost piously in the living room, as if in church. Soto lightened the mood, offering kudos for trying to get along.

Over the last several months, she has tried to nurture empathy among the residents, even by prodding them to discuss their family trees as a getting-to-know-each-other exercise. As they grew more comfortable with one another, they talked about how the city had grown from farming community to urban center, and found commonality in their opposition to a 37-story office building planned nearby.

Her efforts have helped, said Logan resident Sam Romero.

“It’s great that we are meeting,” he said. “That’s progress itself. We still can’t agree on a traffic plan, but we are getting to know each other.”

Santa Ana residents were debating barriers at another location more than 10 years, when they were used to divert traffic around construction and residents of upscale neighborhoods protested the flow of detour traffic down their quiet streets.

The current upset was generated after the city, at the request of French Park residents, conducted a vote in December 2000 to erect the three barriers between French Park and the other two neighborhoods.

There was resentment in the more-Latino neighborhoods when the city did not allow residents of large, multiple-family units to cast ballots. Officials justified it by saying those residents had less stake in the neighborhood. So instead, in apartments of more than four units, only the landlord was allowed to vote. Households in single-family homes were each granted a vote.

In 2003, neighbors voted on whether to make the barriers permanent. Before the ballots could be counted, the ACLU contested the election in U.S. District Court, claiming the disproportionate parceling out of ballots was unconstitutional.

The city said the weighted voting didn’t matter because the election was advisory only.

District Judge Cormac J. Carney sided with the ACLU, noting: “Under our Constitution, the vote of a resident in a spartan apartment means as much as the vote of a resident of a majestic single-family home.”

The day the barriers were removed, “You should have seen my mom -- she was so happy she was rolling down the street in her wheelchair,” said Logan’s Joe Andrade.

But French Park residents want the city to bring the barriers back, so hard feelings have flared again.

“People think the barriers are down and that’s it,” said John Duncan, a frustrated French Court resident. Instead, “we’re back to square one.”

French Park residents said they don’t like being characterized as wealthy or bigoted. If they were, they said, they never would have moved to the neighborhood, which is just blocks from the city’s Latino-flavored shopping district and where, just a decade ago, nightly gunfire was heard.

Their objective, they say, is to reduce traffic congestion, not promote isolation. And statistics indicate that the barriers were effective. Before their use, the city counted 3,318 vehicular trips daily in the neighborhood; after the barriers were installed, the number plummeted to 480.

“There will be no consensus and no success in mediating this,” said French Park Homeowners Assn. member Debbie McEwen. “When people hung other labels on this, such as ethnic divides, suddenly it wasn’t a good thing.... This is not about anything but cars.... People want to make this about class, race, money.”

While McEwen and others clamor for the return of the barriers and say pretenses of reconciliation should be dropped, association President Giles wants to make peace. That is why he invited everyone to his pink, two-story home in French Park.

“I really think that if we can come up with something attractive, we can bring it back,” Giles said. But when he suggested decorating the traffic barriers with floral planters, French Court and Logan residents groaned in disapproval.

Some French Court and Logan residents suggested speed bumps to discourage traffic, so at least they would be able to drive downtown without having to circumvent barriers.

After two hours, the group adjourned without reaching a consensus.

“We still have our hand out to French Park,” said Romero, sounding conciliatory.

French Park neighbor Jeff Dickman joked that everyone should go to Norm’s, an all-night diner, and settle their differences over turkey sandwiches.

“I think we are getting some level of trust,” said Little. “Maybe we can do something that is good for the neighborhood instead of doing something that is divisive.”