Anaheim is building its 69th park along a stretch of the Santa Ana River behind Angel Stadium, and the three-acre site will open next summer with a playground, an interactive canoe exhibit, a sundial and a poem stretching the length of the grounds. What it will not have, at least for now, is anywhere to park.
Anaheim City Council voted unanimously on August 25 to award a roughly $4.5 million construction contract for River Park to Urban Habitat, a Palm Desert-based landscape contractor, according to Voice of OC. City staff reports noted the contract came in below the engineer's probable cost estimate of $4.6 million. Anaheim officials say the park is funded entirely through environmental grants, part of a broader push to transform the river corridor into recreational open space designed with elements reflecting the region's native ancestry, including panels about native wildlife and an exercise zone with picnic seating.
According to the California Natural Resources Agency, up to 25 percent of California Urban Rivers Grant Program funds may be spent on non-construction costs such as CEQA compliance, environmental impact reports and assessments, and planning. According to the California Natural Resources Agency, River Parkway Projects must meet at least two of five statutory conditions, including providing compatible recreational opportunities.
The land itself carries a difficult history. Orange County officials have cleared homeless encampments from the river corridor as part of a broader effort, per earlier reporting.
No Spaces, No Problem — For Now
Anaheim's public works director, Rudy Emami, acknowledged the park will open without parking, telling the outlet there were unspecified obstacles to building it now. Instead, the city is banking on parking eventually arriving through future discussions with the Angels and development of the stadium site, Emami said. City staff plan to use Angel Stadium parking for River Park once that stadium-area development materializes.
Emami framed the sequencing as intentional rather than an oversight. Bringing the park first, he said, will support future development incorporating the park — essentially using the new green space as a selling point for whatever gets built around it later. It's a bet that mirrors how the city has approached the surrounding riverfront: build the amenity, then let private capital catch up to it.
A $200 Million Vision Takes Shape
River Park is the first physical piece of the much larger OC River Walk project, a projected $200 million revamp of the river corridor that Anaheim officials are moving forward with. The plan calls for a new trail, bicycle and pedestrian bridges, and three inflatable dams, according to the Orange County Register. The city secured formal environmental clearance for the project in December 2025, when it filed a CEQA Notice of Determination covering 111 acres across a two-mile stretch of the corridor, according to CEQAnet filings. Early planning work was seeded by a $5 million grant from the California State Coastal Conservancy.
Once complete, the corridor revamp will stretch from Angel Stadium past Honda Center to Anaheim Coves. The corridor's endpoint is Anaheim Coves. The project is an open-space capital project within Anaheim's broader park system.
Stadium Politics Still Loom Over the Riverfront
The riverfront's fortunes are tightly bound to what happens with the stadium property and its owner. Angels owner Arte Moreno announced he was selling the team, and the buyer is reportedly the owner of the Los Angeles Rams, though the sale still requires approval from Major League Baseball. Anaheim officials, real estate consultants and Angels executives met in 2025 to discuss the Surplus Land Act, and Mayor Ashleigh Aitken has said, per The Athletic, that a potential development plan could include youth sports fields, housing and hotel development. Aitken has also said she was hopeful the new Angels owner would work with the city on a stadium development plan and that she plans to see more October baseball in Anaheim, while cautioning that it remains premature to discuss the specifics of future stadium development. City officials have denied that there are any long-term discussions underway about another Angel Stadium land sale.
Anaheim has been burned by stadium negotiations before. A prior attempt to redevelop the 150-acre Angel Stadium property collapsed in May 2022 after an FBI corruption probe revealed then-Mayor Harry Sidhu had tried to pass confidential city information to Angels executives in exchange for a $1 million campaign donation, according to the Los Angeles Times. Sidhu faced allegations in the federal corruption probe. State lawmakers have kept a hand in the process too: Assemblymember Avelino Valencia introduced Assembly Bill 2512 in February, which would amend the Surplus Land Act to require any future sale or lease of Angel Stadium to legally restore “Anaheim” to the team's name, as Hoodline previously reported.
A Neighborhood Already in Transformation
River Park doesn't sit in isolation. Directly adjacent, Ducks owners Henry and Susan Samueli are developing ocVIBE, a $4 billion, 100-acre mixed-use district around Honda Center that will include hotels, restaurants, a concert hall and public parks, with Honda Center itself set to host indoor volleyball during the 2028 Summer Olympics. Hoodline detailed the scale of that adjacent investment in its earlier coverage of Honda Center's billion-dollar renovation. Anaheim allocated nearly $5.5 million toward River Park in the current budget, city officials say, as the small park becomes the first tangible piece of a riverfront transformation that still depends heavily on decisions made far above the parks department — inside stadium boardrooms and, potentially, the state Capitol.
