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# Letter: Ficus trees should stay to preserve downtown shade
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/kenny-mack-send-comments-to-editor-smdp-com-word-in-edgewise-save-the-shade-editor/
- Published: 2007-08-15T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T02:34:50.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Downtown, #archive-import

*By John Lord Santa Monica*

(Re: “Ficus fiasco continues,” Aug. 14) The complaint of sign blockage on Second and Fourth streets has a familiar ring. It is basically the same complaint landowners made when Third Street was being redeveloped: That the street must be open to traffic so that people driving by would see their signs. Now, Third Street is closed to traffic and major national retailers are competing to locate there.

Personally, I’m not fond of ficus trees, but they were the tree of choice of some city employee decades ago, and as a result, we have a plague of them, not just downtown, but on 20th Street, Yale (whose residents fought off the city’s planned destruction of their trees) and elsewhere. We have invested decades and a considerable amount of the taxpayers’ money in bringing up these trees, and now they are mature. One of the species’ great virtues is that it does provide heavy shade. Ginkgos are OK with me, but this is not the time to cut down the ficus.

For a preview of what a clear-cut street looks like, visit Arizona Avenue between Third and Fifth streets around noon. It is bleak, broiling and uninviting. The picturesque old carobs were cut down last year (some, at least, were diseased) and have been replaced by Foxtail Palms. At a time when the Los Angeles City Council has ordered a stop to city planting of palms in an effort to provide more shade during what is likely to be many years of increasing temperatures, Santa Monica is ripping out shade trees and replacing them with palms — telephone poles with hair, as someone has called them. The result is very hot asphalt.

The city has persisted in taking a Band-Aid approach to this problem. It has, for example, required owners seeking building permits to provide passageways to the alleys, for example, the one at Borders (on Third Street). In any case, it hasn’t worked. Few people want to go to alleys and a closed passageway is less inviting than a street. The current redevelopment scheme — mere streetscaping — is another Band-Aid. The real long-term solution is three new narrow traffic-less pedestrian ways from Second Street to Fourth Street, open to the sky, halfway down each block between Wilshire and Broadway. The city could create such walkways by exercising its right of eminent domain to condemn six lots, fairly compensating the landowners. Of course, it would be a major expense, but it would increase the value of land on Second and Third streets and be a permanent improvement in the city. (The Daily Press’) report reveals this project as, partly, another example of the city government’s insatiable search for more money, in this case from the “Federal Transportation Enhancement Activities fund.” Mayor Bloom, echoing President Bush, tells us to stay the course. That is sensible only if the course leads to results we want. I do not know any Santa Monicans who are enthusiastic about the continuing mini-Manhattanization of downtown Santa Monica. City staff’s idea of what the city should be like does not seem to coincide with that of the residents, and they have involved us in a vicious circle of development and congestion mitigation. I’m reminded of the City Manager who wanted to build an island with a hotel in the bay.

Perhaps it is again time for those who live and vote here to communicate their vision of the future Santa Monica more forcefully.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 15, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/081507.pdf?ref=smdp.com)