City plans to remove trees from Second
DOWNTOWN SM Second and Fourth streets — two corridors often snubbed by shoppers for the more popular Third Street Promenade — are about to get some lovin’ from the city.
The city of Santa Monica’s Civil Engineering and Architecture Division sent out a notice last week inviting contractors to submit bids for the Second and Fourth streets pedestrian and streetscape improvement project. The estimated $6.5 million undertaking is intended to physically alter Second and Fourth streets from Broadway to Wilshire Boulevard, rendering the two corridors more pedestrian and business friendly.
The city plans to close its bidding process on June 12 and select a contractor in the weeks to follow. Construction would begin after the summer and be completed within 296 calendar days. The streets are currently lined with large ficus and palm trees that some business owners complain are overgrown and blocking signage and advertisements, effectively darkening the streets and creating an uninviting stretch to patronize.
The project calls for more than 40 of the trees to be relocated to the Santa Monica Airport and Palisades Park. About 28 trees have been determined by the community forester to have a low survivability rate if uprooted and will be cut down. About 152 young ginkgo biloba trees, which are much smaller than the old ficus trees, will be planted in their stead on Second and Fourth streets.
There will be two ginkgo bilobas planted for each ficus or palm removed.
Once the ginkgo biloba trees reach a predetermined size, the remaining ficus and palm trees will be removed and replaced as well, according to Eugenia Chusid, a civil engineering associate with the city.
“It was decided to plant the younger trees to light the streets and open it up for the merchants who want to see the advertisement for the stores,” Chusid said.
Adamm Grittlefeld, who has owned Adamm’s Gallery in the same Fourth Street location for 27 years, is eager to see all the trees removed and new ones planted in their place.
The ficus trees create a mess when they’re trimmed and the roots on several of the trees are so overgrown that they actually have broken above the sidewalk, Grittlefeld said.
Pointing to a tree in front of his store, located on the 1400 block of Fourth Street, Grittlefeld recalls an incident about 15 years ago when a young girl exited the parking structure and tripped over the root of the tree, breaking her chin.
Not everyone is in a rush to start chopping trees.
Kia Salek, of Nobel Jewelry on Fourth Street, circulated a petition a few years ago to save the trees along Fourth Street and submitted a list of approximately 1,500 signatures to the city.
Rather than uprooting the trees, the city should try harder to maintain them, said Salek, who is also an environmental engineer.
The trees might block a few store signs, but they’ve been here longer than we’ve been here, he added.
“They don’t need to go,” Salek said.“They don’t need to cut the trees.”
The project will also add curb bumpouts on each block of Second and Fourth streets between Broadway and Wilshire Boulevard. Unlike the curb bumpouts along Fourth Street in Ocean Park, the bumpouts in Downtown Santa Monica will not include landscaping, Chusid said.
Also included in the project are new ramps at the crosswalks and street light circuit replacements.
The streets fall within the jurisdiction of Bayside District Corporation, a private/public entity that manages Downtown Santa Monica. The biggest concern for Bayside heading into the project was to improve lighting and facade on the parking structures, believing that the structures were too dark. Those changes have been implemented into the project, said Kathleen Rawson, executive director of Bayside District Corporation.
Bayside would also like to see the construction have a very limited negative impact on the businesses on Second and Fourth streets, Rawson added.
“We’re looking forward to the improvements on those streets,” Rawson said. “Hopefully, it’ll get done quickly and it will be lovely once it’s complete.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 22, 2007. Read the original PDF.