VENTURA : Palms to Give Aging Plaza a New Look

It looked like the scene of an arboreal massacre--dozens of leafy tree branches scattered across the pavement of Ventura’s California Plaza.

But what may have appeared as vegetation mayhem was actually the latest step in the city’s effort to rehabilitate the aging plaza. The eight New Zealand Christmas trees lying pell-mell around the plaza are being destroyed to make way for 10 feathery palm trees, city planners say.

With the palms, unlike their bushier kin, residents will finally be able to look down California Street to the ocean, city planner Pat Richardson said.

“It’s really not an issue of trees,” he said. “It’s an issue of allowing better visual and pedestrian access.”

Certainly, he said, this is not the city acting Scrooge-like by removing Christmas trees as the holidays approach.

“They don’t look like Christmas trees,” he said. “It’s just a silly name. They flower. They get little red balls. They are really messy trees and kind of dirty-looking.”

The new palms will be planted within the next 30 days, he said. The entire plaza project, which includes a new patterned walkway and a fountain, should be finished by March 1, he said.