Re “Urban Forest Crowd Was Tiny but Blossoming with Ideas”
Attendance was considerably higher than before on Saturday morning for the fourth and final community meeting to contribute input to City Hall’s plan for reforesting Culver City neighborhoods.
As commercial districts were evaluated for tree-planting, the 20-person audience in the Dan Patacchia Room included business owners and two leaders of the Chamber of Commerce, Steve Rose and Goran Eriksson.
“We talked about the idea of interspersing shade trees with palm trees on some boulevards,” said Public Works Director Charles Herbertson, leader of the project to restrategize the greenness of Culver City. The idea there would be to create a better walking environment.
“We discussed the desirability to have more permeable canopies, especially in business areas to let more light through. That would afford light more easily than the dense canopies of ficus trees we have now where you can’t see through them at all.”
Mr. Herbertson said there is a continuing interesting in greening and upgrading the south Sepulveda Boulevard neighborhood identified by the Albert Vera market. “We talked about possibly putting in more and different kinds of trees there than we have now to spruce up the area,” he said.
“There was discussion about one of the same old subjects: Sign visibility vs. placement of trees. Sensitivity of signage is something we need to be concerned about with this project.
“There was talk of tree-lighting as a way to help business areas,” Mr. Herbertson said. “Lights interspersed among the branches, the different ways of wrapping lights. There was a mention of globes hanging from trees, as they have in Santa Monica.”
This style could be repeated in Culver City since City Hall is employing the same Venice consultant, arteccho, that Santa Monica hired.
(To be continued)
