Lawndale Will Live Up to Its Name With Plan for Median Landscaping

In an effort to put more lawn into Lawndale, the City Council has voted to have 15 members of the California Conservation Corps help landscape the Hawthorne Boulevard median at the intersection with Manhattan Beach Boulevard.

Under the plan approved Thursday night, the corps will provide free labor for 3 1/2 weeks, and the city will spend $15,000 for rental equipment and landscaping materials, such as dirt, seed and a sprinkler system.

The volunteers will begin work Monday, removing cement from the center of the median and replacing it with soil and seed.

City Engineer Jim Sanders said corps representatives told him that they are willing to work through February on the medians at other intersections along Hawthorne Boulevard, but the council delayed a decision on those projects.

Councilmen Harold E. Hofmann, Dan McKenzie and Larry Rudolph voted to support the landscaping plan, whereas Councilwoman Carol Norman voted against the proposal and Mayor Sarann Kruse abstained.

Norman and Kruse both said they think that the plan needs further study. In an interview after the meeting, Norman said that because of drought conditions the city should consider planting vegetation on the median that requires less water than does grass.

Kruse said during the meeting that before the corps begins digging up the median, the city should draft a design concept that provides adequate drainage. “I want to see Hawthorne Boulevard nice and green,” Kruse said. “But again, is putting grass in the right idea?”

Objecting to any further delays, Rudolph said the landscaping of the median along Hawthorne Boulevard is long overdue. “It just sits there and sits there and sits there, and it’s going to sit there until something gets done,” he said.

The California Conservation Corps, a group founded in the late 1970s, is a work program that employs more than 2,000 people a year. Members--men and women from the ages of 18 to 23--build parks and trails, plant trees, clear streams and restore historic buildings.

Corps members receive three weeks of training, and then they are assigned to perform community improvement projects, such as the Lawndale median. The state pays them the minimum wage.

In October, the council approved a plan to use volunteer workers--including Hofmann, McKenzie and Rudolph--to remove the concrete to make way for landscaping the Hawthorne Boulevard median at a different site--the intersection with Marine Avenue.

Norman and Kruse also voted against that project, saying that it required further study.

That project, which was suggested by former Planning Commission Chairman Gary McDonald, used about half a dozen volunteers and was completed in less than two days. After the volunteers removed the cement and prepared the seedbed, city workers installed grass and a sprinkler system.

The median along Hawthorne Boulevard has been the focus of much study and debate over the years. In 1970, the city installed Astroturf on the median, but city officials became disillusioned with the phony grass when it became faded and began to trap bits of trash. Last year, city officials decided to remove the plastic grass, leaving bare cement with patches of brown Astroturf adhesive.