City Prefers to Pass on the Palms : Santa Clarita:Debate takes root as a real estate firm pushes to include the trees in a shopping center. Officials here prefer leaves to fronds.

A heated debate is growing in this suburban community--one deeply rooted in the city of Santa Clarita’s seven-year history.

The issue: trees. Arboreal discrimination.

Whereas palm trees have long been common and even emblematic of many Southern California communities, a real estate developer has found the tall and distinctive trees are not a welcome sight to all in Santa Clarita.

Here they prefer leaves, not fronds.

When Richard Rasak, vice president of the Encino-based real estate firm RKR, submitted architectural designs to Santa Clarita city officials for a new Spanish-style shopping center, he never expected the palm trees would be a point of contention. He had envisioned 23 date palms adorning the site.

Councilwoman Jan Heidt was not pleased. “It is not consistent with the area to have (palms as) a totally dominant feature,” said Heidt, who has been the most vocal City Council member opposed to the RKR plan. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Other council members echoed her sentiments, saying that oaks, sycamores and similar canopy trees that provide shade are more appropriate to the look of the city.

Rasak was taken aback.

“We had a meeting and they asked us if we could please substitute the tree,” he said. “We went back to our landscape architect and the only suitable thing they could come up with was the Italian cypress. It looks like a skinny Christmas tree.

“That’s not what we’re looking for, we’re looking for something graceful, elegant and noble,” Rasak said.

But city officials say the trees are out of place in Santa Clarita. Just ask the city arborist.

“Santa Clarita is more known for canopy-type trees,” said Ray Miramontez, who has held the position of arborist with the city for four years. “It’s an identity thing. We want to keep our identity as such.”

Rasak said the city is overlooking the positives of palms. “The root structure of the date palm is relatively compact and thin, reducing the chance of roots tearing up the pavement,” Rasak wrote in a letter to the City Council, “and making this an ideal tree selection.”

Palms do not drop leaves, he said, and they conserve water because as desert trees they require little moisture to survive.

“We went to great lengths to get the right mixture of architectural design, and that design included palm trees,” Rasak said, still skeptical that the city may not accept his revised plans, which call for a reduced number of palms--13.

“I would be surprised if they told me I couldn’t place a (palm) tree on my property,” he said.

But that is exactly what the city is planning to do, Heidt said, when the council votes on the issue at its Feb. 27 meeting, which Rasak plans to attend.

The City Council does not have an outright ban on palms, its members say, but demands that they be in the minority at a site.

“We have a list of acceptable trees,” said Heidt, who went on to say that palms “are permitted in the landscaping as an accent but not a dominant feature.”

“Our policy is a balanced policy,” she said.

Rasak’s shopping center--located at the corner of Valencia Boulevard and Magic Mountain Parkway--has been under construction since November and is scheduled for completion by June.

The city’s infatuation with trees goes back to its very founding. The very first law passed by its council after incorporation in 1987 was an oak preservation ordinance. Many locals will proudly tell the story of the Oak of the Golden Dream, a stately tree off Placerita Canyon Road where gold was discovered in 1842.

In 1990, the City Council asked Newhall Land and Farming Co. to reduce the number of palms it intended to plant around its Valencia Town Center shopping mall.

“We wanted to plant more palm trees than we ended up planting at Valencia Town Center,” said Newhall company spokeswoman Marlee Lauffer. “It was not something that the City Council was interested in seeing.”

In another incident, a local woman wanted to uproot an oak from her back yard after her son fell from it, breaking his arm. The city said no.