Arab American business owners and residents in Anaheim may soon get what they spent decades advocating for: signs on nearby freeways and local streets welcoming visitors to Anaheim’s Little Arabia business district.
The cultural enclave is home to over 100 Arab-owned businesses like falafel shops, specialty Arab desert bakeries, barbers and Halal butcher shops in West Anaheim.
At Tuesday’s 5 p.m. meeting, Anaheim City Council members are expected to vote on working with CalTrans to put up signs on the 5 and 91 freeways directing commuters to Little Arabia.
They are also expected to discuss potential future improvements to Brookhurst Street, where Little Arabia is located, at the request of Mayor Ashleigh Aitken.
“The designation was long overdue and it’s exciting to actually now start taking the next steps to turn that designation into a tangible reality for both the business owners and the residents in this area,” Aitken said at the Dec. 12 city council workshop about Brookhurst.
Aitken’s father, Wylie Aitken, chairs the Voice of OC’s Board of Directors.
Anaheim is expected to create four freeway signs for Little Arabia and give them to CalTrans to put up if the installment is approved. The installation is estimated to take six to nine months, according to a staff report.
Was a Study Necessary For Little Arabia Signs to go up?
Tonight’s meeting comes after city hired consultants presented the Brookhurst Street study to the city council in December, recommending signs, night markets and expanding the district’s boundaries.
The district currently stretches down Brookhurst Street from Broadway to Ball Road.
It also comes months after the Arab American community celebrated the one year anniversary of the city officially recognizing a stretch of Brookhurst Street as Little Arabia after decades of advocacy and in the wake of one of the largest public corruption scandals to rock OC.
But since the official recognition in August of 2022, community members have wondered where and when signs would go up.
[Read: Anaheim’s Little Arabia Still Awaits Signs One Year After Official Recognition]
And so have the business owners who started setting up shop along Brookhurst Street in West Anaheim in the 1980s and helped convert a run down part of town to a cultural attraction.
Anaheim officials like City Councilman Carlos Leon at the time pointed to the study, saying they’ll wait on the findings before moving forward with next steps.
Leon said that the study created a roadmap of sorts for improving Little Arabia and the surrounding area.
“I really think that brighter days are definitely ahead for Little Arabia and for all the diverse small businesses,” he said at the Dec. 12 meeting.
It was a study that some community members questioned was necessary, arguing that they had done the research themselves over decades.
Some also worried the study would target immigrant-owned small businesses as real estate opportunities and drive them out of the area.
[Read: What’s in the Future for Anaheim’s Little Arabia?]
Council members Stephen Faessel and Jose Diaz, who both voted for the designation in 2022, defended the study that cost $200,000 at the December meeting.
“We needed a study and I remember back in August of ‘22, a lot of residents and businesses said why do we need a study? Let’s just start now,” Faessel said at the Dec. 12 meeting.
“What we’ve received from this is much more information than any of us probably expected – a lot of good information, a lot of good ideas that maybe individually we may not have come up with.”
But in other OC ethnic enclaves, a study was not necessary for signs to go up recognizing the area.
Last year, Buena Park officials unanimously voted on September 26 to recognize a part of Beach Boulevard as Koreatown – the county’s latest cultural district – and put up signs.
[Read: Buena Park’s Koreatown Becomes OC’s Newest Official Cultural Enclave]
On Oct. 10, City officials unveiled the first Koreatown street sign – about two weeks later without a study.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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