DOWNTOWN It’s Wednesday morning and business as usual on Fourth Street, which buzzes with activity as people wait for buses to arrive, drivers scour for parking spaces and shop owners open their doors for the day.
Less than 24 hours earlier, it was a much different scene here, when close to 100 local activists marched the sidewalks in support of the endangered ficus trees that line Second and Fourth streets.
The controversy that has been brewing beneath the shady trees for the past several months — with city officials and local environmental activists butting heads over a proposal to remove and transplant 54 mature ficus trees from a three-block stretch of the downtown corridors — is expected to come to a head on Monday morning, when tree removal is slated to commence.
Some members of the activist group Treesavers are claiming they will chain themselves to the bark in order to spare the trees, scheduled to be uprooted as part of a downtown streetscape improvement
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 4, 2007. Read the original PDF.