How the Amapas Neighborhood Association Supports Local Projects

Who painted the five new pedestrian crosswalks that appeared near Hortensias this summer? Who fixed the road grate that used to catch every scooter tire at the Hortensias and Highway 200 intersection? And who has been walking down to Calle Santa Barbara every few weeks with a clipboard, watching a hillside slowly give way?

The group behind these efforts is the Amapas Neighborhood Association, made up of more than 300 members, including residents and business owners, and known around the colonia simply as ANA.

If you live in Amapas, or spend enough time here to notice the murals on the Abedul stairs or the new garbage container north of Villa Tizoc, you've already benefited from work this group did. ANA raises its own money, runs its own inspections, and negotiates with the city about neighborhood priorities.

A Neighborhood Council With a Bigger Job Than Its Name Suggests

ANA was founded in 2002 and holds official standing with the city as Amapas's Junta Vecinal, its legally recognized neighborhood council. That title carries real weight. Since many Amapas residents aren't Mexican citizens, ANA functions as the primary bridge between the colonia and government offices, the entity that keeps neighborhood priorities on the agenda at City Hall meetings that most residents will never attend themselves. Its recent wins include road improvements on Calle Hortensias, crosswalk repainting and new pedestrian sidewalks along Highway 200, and the full renovation of the Amapas stairs.

These projects were carried out through neighborhood organizing, with residents funding several of them themselves.

What $59,000 in Neighbor Money Actually Bought

The clearest example is the Abedul stairs, the steep concrete passage connecting Highway 200 down to Playa de los Muertos that hundreds of people use every day. By 2023 the stairs, railings, and lighting had deteriorated badly enough that ANA describes the area as having become a hub for drug activity. So the association launched a citizen fundraising campaign in April of that year with a goal of $50,000 USD. Neighbors and donors ended up giving $59,000, funding new concrete stairs, railings, improved lighting, and landscaping at a total cost of roughly 1.4 million pesos, all without a peso from the municipal budget.

Once the structure was rebuilt, ANA commissioned local muralist Danyol León, known around town as Tamale Ringwald, to paint the stairway. More than 40 volunteers spent a weekend applying 60 liters of paint donated by Benjamin Moore Mexico, and the finished project was unveiled in November 2024.

The same machine kept running through this summer. According to ANA's own update from mid-July, the association delivered five new pedestrian crosswalks, repaired the road grate at the Hortensias and Highway 200 intersection, installed a new garbage container near Villa Tizoc thanks to a private donor, ran an electronics recycling drive in June, added new plaques to the community memorial wall, and organized a relief drive sending food and disaster supplies to earthquake victims in Venezuela. Small projects, none of them city-funded, all of them visible if you know to look.

The Harder Test: Calle Santa Barbara

Rebuilding a stairway with donated paint is one kind of problem. A hillside that's actively failing is another, and Amapas has one of those right now.

Calle Santa Barbara is a public street, which on paper makes it the city's responsibility. But the instability lies beneath Calle Santa Barbara, next to the Serena development. Years ago, as part of that project's approval, the developer agreed to improve Calle Santa Barbara once construction wrapped, rebuild the stairs down to the beach, and preserve a tree that had long stood in the roadway. Engineers and geologists later flagged instability in the hillside, and a resident-formed group calling itself the Save Calle Santa Barbara committee began working alongside ANA to monitor the situation.

The most recent inspection, conducted jointly by ANA, the committee, and city officials on April 30, 2026, found the problem had gotten significantly worse. The compacted dirt road is now completely gone in sections due to work on retaining wall anchors. The final curved stretch of the street no longer exists. The retaining wall protecting Villa Sausalito is badly damaged and at risk of collapse. As ANA put it in its own public update:

This is no longer a simple repair. It is now a major infrastructure issue.

Because Santa Barbara is a public street, the city carries legal and financial responsibility for fixing it. ANA has been explicit that its own role is limited to acting as a link between the community and the city, not to fund the repair itself. That's an important distinction. The same organization that raised $59,000 to rebuild a public stairway has no comparable authority to compel a hillside repair near a private development. What it can do, and has done, is get engineers on site, coordinate with city officials and keep residents informed about the situation.

Why the Mechanism Matters More Than the Mural

This is the part that's easy to miss if you only see the finished stairs and the fundraiser flyers. Living day to day in Amapas means relying on a system with three separate owners: the city holds legal responsibility for public infrastructure, private developers carry conditions attached to their own projects, and a volunteer association with no tax authority and no construction budget supplies the monitoring, the meetings, and often half the money that actually gets something fixed. For Santa Barbara, residents coordinate through a committee, a WhatsApp thread, and a rotating schedule for checking the retaining wall.

ANA runs a Neighborhood Watch WhatsApp group that gives residents a direct line to local police for non-emergency concerns, joinable by contacting the association's administrator. Proceeds from the association's fundraisers now fund a broader effort called the Road to Safety initiative, aimed at improving highway safety, supporting residents affected by the Santa Barbara situation, and building out emergency evacuation planning for the neighborhood.

That planning has an obvious deadline attached to it. Pacific cyclone season runs from May 15 through November 30, and forecasters are expecting 18 to 21 named storms this year. As of today, Amapas is in the middle of that window, which makes the hillside monitoring on Santa Barbara and the evacuation planning under Road to Safety active concerns rather than abstract ones.

How to Actually Meet the People Running Things

ANA's calendar gives residents several concrete entry points into the organization, not just donation requests.

The 2026 board, for reference, is Gary Green as president, Steve Clarke as treasurer, Will Murdoch as secretary, Dawn Stephens and Jaime Tril as members at large, and Viviana Teston as administrator. These are volunteers, not paid staff, and the first three dates above have already come and gone this year. The fourth Rock the River, the one at AWAYSIS, is still ahead on the calendar.

The Actual Takeaway

The stairs you climb, the crosswalk you cross without thinking about it, and the WhatsApp alert that warns you a street is closed reflect community organizing and coordination with city officials. In Amapas, neighbors have supported projects through fundraisers and board meetings, while Santa Barbara illustrates how responsibility for public infrastructure and neighborhood efforts can differ. That division of responsibility makes coordination between residents and city officials central to addressing issues like Santa Barbara.

Daniel Alvarez Real Estate pays attention to details like these because they shape what daily life actually feels like in a neighborhood long before any of it shows up in a listing. If you want to talk about what's changing in Amapas, or anywhere else along the bay, get in touch.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.