Landscaped Look for Huntington Beach : Beautification: City is targeting San Diego Freeway off-ramp for a trees-and-flowers project.

Surfboards, sand, pier.

Those usually are the images that come to mind when you think of this coastal city. But what about tall palms, jacaranda trees and glossy abelia plants?

City officials here are hoping that such foliage arranged in distinctive landscaping will give the city an even more distinctive image. Last week, the City Council voted unanimously to pursue a trees-and-flowers project to make its major freeway off-ramp a spiffy “front door” to the community.

According to state Department of Transportation officials in Sacramento, the Huntington Beach plan is part of a growing state trend of cities picking up the tab to beautify freeways that run through their communities.

“We’re seeing more communities that want to landscape freeway areas at their expense, and we’re encouraging them and working with them,” said Ed Kress, chief landscape architect for Caltrans. “I think you’re going to be seeing more of this in the future.”

In Huntington Beach, the goal is to use plantings to make the city stand out from all other other Southern California cities crisscrossed by freeways.

“We think that beautiful, distinctive landscaping will let people driving on the San Diego Freeway know that Huntington Beach is a distinctive community--one that has identity,” said Tom Andrusky, an official with the city’s Economic Development Department.

The project calls for landscaping the off-ramp islands leading from the San Diego Freeway to Beach Boulevard. That off-ramp is, in effect, the threshold to Huntington Beach for most tourists and shoppers coming into the city.

City officials said there are persuasive financial reasons for making the freeway entrance and exit unique and attractive.

In a memo to the City Council, Deputy City Administrator Barbara Kaiser said the Huntington Center mall--one of the city’s major sales-tax generators--will directly benefit from a more attractive freeway off-ramp. The Huntington Center mall is at the junction of the San Diego Freeway, Beach Boulevard and Edinger Avenue.

Kress, in a telephone interview from Sacramento, said Caltrans officials have worked with two other Southern California cities that petitioned for replanting freeway medians and cloverleafs at city expense.

“Cerritos has some very ambitious plans, and we are working with them, and we worked with the city of Temecula in Riverside County in that community’s effort to put its own plantings along the freeway,” Kress said.

Similarly, Santa Ana’s redevelopment agency did some landscaping around the interchange of the Costa Mesa Freeway and Edinger Avenue. That work was done as part of landscaping to entice shoppers to the nearby Santa Ana Auto Mall.

In Huntington Beach, city officials said they will use Caltrans-approved species of trees and plants to replace existing landscaping at the San Diego Freeway and Beach Boulevard.

Andrusky said the city will use tall, stately Mexican fan palm trees, jacaranda trees, oleander and glossy abelia plants arranged in a distinctive landscape style. An arrangement has not been picked.

Existing plants and trees will be removed from the off-ramp and planted elsewhere, officials said. A date has not been scheduled for the new plantings, but Andrusky said installation of new landscaping “will probably be in the next 18 to 24 months.”

Huntington Beach officials said state and federal funds that can only be used for highway-related purposes will pay for the freeway beautification project. The estimated cost is $464,250.