Remote Surveillance Trailer in Santa Ana, CA

SANTA ANA, Calif. – The City of Santa Ana invites the public to come together in celebration of Chicano culture and history at the fourth annual Chicano Heritage Festival this Sunday, August 24.

Santa Ana was the first city in Orange County to officially recognize August as Chicano Heritage Month in 2021, and this year marks the fourth consecutive year of festivities honoring this vibrant cultural legacy.

This free, family-friendly event will feature live entertainment, a car cruise, cultural exhibits, local food vendors, community resource booths, and a variety of interactive activities for all ages. The festival will take place from 2 to 7 p.m. at Centennial Park, 3000 W. Edinger Ave., in Santa Ana.

“On behalf of the Santa Ana City Council, I am thrilled to invite the entire community to join us at the Chicano Heritage Festival to celebrate this important part of our culture and heritage,” Mayor Valerie Amezcua said. “Chicano contributions have played a vital role in shaping our city’s identity, from educational equity and political representation to vibrant, cultural expression through art, music and fashion.”

A community car cruise will kick off the festival, arriving at Centennial Park at 2 p.m. The car cruise vehicles will be on display during the event.

Joining us at the event will be civil rights pioneers Vickie Castro, a leader in the Chicano Civil Rights Movement who helped mobilize students in the historic East L.A. walkouts in 1968; and members of the Guzman family, one of four families involved in the landmark Mendez v. Westminster case that helped end school segregation in California.

The festival will have an exciting musical line-up hosted by Becky Lu with performances from:

In addition to dynamic entertainment, attendees can look forward to special participation from our Title Level Partners:

Park gates will open at 12 p.m. for early arrivals. Parking is free but limited at Centennial Park. Guests are welcome to bring their own lawn chairs, blankets and picnic meals to enjoy the festivities. Canopies are welcome in designated areas throughout the park. Please note that alcohol, smoking, grilling, and overnight camping are prohibited.

In honor of the significant contributions of Mexican American culture amongst the community, the Santa Ana City Council will present a proclamation on Tuesday, Aug. 19, declaring August as Chicano Heritage Month in Santa Ana.

For performance times and more event information, please visit the Chicano Heritage Festival website.

McFadden Ave. from Harbor Blvd. to Grand Ave. Typical Cross Section

Standard Ave. and McFadden Ave. Bikeways Improvements

The Standard Avenue and McFadden Avenue Bikeway projects (Projects) were identified in the City’s Safe Mobility Santa Ana Plan (SMSA), Active Transportation Plan (ATP), and Central Santa Ana Complete Streets Plans (CSACS), hereinafter referred to as “Plans”. Per SMSA and CSACS both Standard Avenue and McFadden Avenue were recommended for road diets, protected and separated bicycle lanes and bike signals, green-back sharrows and a protected intersection at McFadden Avenue and Standard Avenue.

Project Benefits

The improvements have been designed utilizing Complete Streets principals to provide safe, comfortable, and convenient travel for all users: pedestrians, bicyclists, transit riders, and motorists.

This project implements protected bike lanes along McFadden Avenue from Harbor Boulevard to Grand Avenue, and Standard Avenue from Warner Avenue to 2nd Street. It also implements the City’s first fully-protected intersection at Standard Avenue and McFadden Avenue with separate traffic signal bicycle phasing and signal head indications. Pedestrian safety improvements along the corridors include high-visibility crosswalks and curb extensions at various cross streets.

This project will serve the community by providing easier and safer connectivity to Downtown Santa Ana, Santa Ana College, the Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center and the Orange County Civic Center. The project corridors run through historically underserved neighborhoods and the improvements will directly benefit a population in need of healthier ways to get around their community without relying on an automobile. This project will provide opportunities to engage in physical activity, promote a healthier lifestyle, provide a safe and low-stress pedestrian mobility option, decrease car trips and vehicle miles traveled, and improve air quality by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Each of these plans included extensive amounts of community outreach to ensure that any of the resulting project recommendations were a direct reflection of the community needs and wants. For each of the plans, Community Outreach Plans were developed by City staff and consultant teams which included reaching out to stakeholders, local businesses and residents, thereby encouraging them to become project champions and to form part of the Community Advisory Committee (CAC). A combined total of 17 community outreach events were held for these plans between 2016 and 2019.

In addition, these plans developed web-based surveys in which the community had multiple opportunities to provide their input on each of the plans as they were being prepared. All of the outreach ensured that these plans were community driven planning documents that established a road map for City staff to know where the need was and what type of projects to pursue in the future.

In response to the project needs identified by the various planning documents stated above, staff pursued grant funding from the Active Transportation Program in 2018. In May 2019, the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) notified the City of Santa Ana that the Active Transportation Program projects were awarded the requested grant funding.

Following the programming of grant funds, City staff began working on the design and additional community outreach efforts for the project. During the design phase for the project in 2021, a combined total of 4 additional community meetings were held. Since a few years had passed since the community had seen these projects, the outreach meetings focused on providing the history on how the projects were initially identified and on ensuring that the project improvements were still in alignment with what the community wanted to see implemented by these projects.

During the meetings, one of the major concerns with both project street corridors was on-street parking. As a result, the project team completed and thorough assessment of all existing street parking and overlaid it with the project improvements. As a result of the parking assessment and through creative engineering design, the project will be adding a total of 87 parking spaces along the corridors, 23 additional parking spaces on McFadden Avenue and 64 on Standard Avenue.

Project Scope, Funding, & Status

Construction Manager Miguel Martinez Email: mmartinez15@santa-ana.org Phone: 714-647-5027 Senior Construction Manager Edward Torres Email: etorres@santa-ana.org Phone: 714-647-5018

General Questions

PWA Construction Email: PWAConstruction@santa-ana.org Phone: 714-647-5074