Sunwood Central

Sunwood Central covers 140.3 acres and the county records 480 parcels and 471 site addresses inside the boundary, at a median distinct legal lot of 6,000 square feet, which is the tightest median of any Santa Ana neighborhood. Fourteen named streets run 4.55 miles within it, among them Ramona Dr, San Lorenzo Ave, Rosewood Ave, Segerstrom Ave, Shelton St, Hemlock Way and Towner St.

The zoning layer gives 61.7 acres to single family residence and 39.4 acres to general commercial, and the general plan carries 66.1 acres as low density residential against 39.5 acres as urban neighborhood. Segerstrom Triangle Park is the one city facility inside the boundary, a neighborhood site of 1.3 acres. Santa Ana Unified covers all of the ground, with Washington Elementary 0.08 miles away and Saddleback High 0.09 miles away.

The Segerstrom family was among the growers who worked this plain for generations, and Segerstrom Avenue, which runs through Sunwood Central today, along with Segerstrom Triangle Park inside the neighborhood, carry the family's name onto ground they once farmed in lima beans rather than the shopping center they would later build a few miles away.

Houses arrived here earlier than in most of the neighborhoods around it. The typical house here dates to 1955, and 432 of Sunwood Central's 469 homes went up in the 1950s alone, part of the wave that took Santa Ana's population from 45,533 in 1950 to 100,350 by 1960 as veterans who had trained at the Santa Ana Army Air Base came home and settled with their families.