Tomlinson Park

Tomlinson Park holds 240 addresses on 41.1 acres in northwest Brea, across 2.02 miles of street and eighteen named roads. Almost every one of them is a surname: Reynoso Parkway, Baxter Parkway, Armstrong, Delaney, Mathews, Johnson, Hurst, Peterkin, Atkins, Millen, Salveson, Casner, Jones, Launer, Tremaine, Williams, Charleston, Skyler and Dans. The parcel layer counts 261 parcels, 259 of them residential and none carrying a unit designator, on lots running to a median of 0.077 acres with structures to a median of 2,493 square feet and four bedrooms.

The city's tree inventory records 242 street trees inside the boundary, and two works by Larry Bell stand here, Sumer number 13 and Sumer number 18, both installed in 2004. The zoning is TPSP across 27.6 acres and the general plan divides the ground four ways: 11.5 acres of High Density Residential, 9.2 Medium, 4.7 Low and 3.6 acres of parks and recreation. Tomlinson Park is in Brea Olinda Unified, with Mariposa Elementary 0.67 miles away holding 504 students and Brea Junior High 0.96 miles with 921.

Before the houses this was a nursery. Select Nurseries, Inc. of Brea was publishing wholesale price lists by 1961, and the Brea Museum and Historical Society records the business at 12831 East Central Avenue, on the ground where Founders Park now sits. The neighborhood carries the name of the nurseryman who ran it. That fits the wider story of this side of the city, where sheep range gave way to walnuts and citrus, and citrus in turn gave way to commercial growers and then to tracts once the groves stopped paying in the 1950s.

Centex built Tomlinson Park between 2002 and 2004. The homeowners association was formed in 2003 and covers 231 single-family homes; the city records 240 addresses across forty-one acres with a typical house near 2,493 square feet on small lots, and plans running from around 900 to 2,700 square feet. Founders Park, with a pool, playground, picnic area, basketball and tennis courts, sits where the nursery beds were.