Bay Area Older Adults Trailblazers Program

The School of Arts and Culture at MHP (SOAC) is bringing green infrastructure to a newly acquired property. La Placita is across the street from the Mexican Heritage Plaza (La Plaza), where SOAC has operated since 2011. SOAC is planning, designing, and implementing a safe, urban, public, outdoor recreational space for the Alum Rock Avenue and Eastgate Avenue sides of the acquired property. The space includes an educational experience about the native habitat of East San José.

While there are many trails in the Santa Clara Valley, none connect the Santa Cruz Mountains to the Diablo Range and tie the Santa Clara Valley into the Bay Area Ridge Trail, a 375-mile network of trails that unites the ridges circling the Bay Area. The Authority is helping to fund the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council’s feasibility study to consider and identify a preferred Ridge Trail alignment between Santa Teresa County Park and the Coyote Creek Trail as part of ongoing efforts to fix this South Bay “trail-gap.”

This pilot is an initiative by the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy to develop, implement, and measure the outcomes and impact of a regular calendar of parks and nature-based public programs. The Project Scope supports the implementation of 20 public programs over two years (approximately 10 per year), offering trail tours, nature walks, visitor center programs, special-topic workshops, youth activities, and more. The aim is to cultivate environmental stewardship, social cohesion, and civic engagement through nature-based programming that connects people to nature and each other.