High School Palm Fronds Fan Furor over View Impacts

• Timing of Tree Planting Is Not Expected to Help Local Mood on BB Plans

BY SUZANNE GULDIMANN

Malibu High School, already under fire from its residential neighbors for allegedly failing to listen to community concerns over the upcoming Measure BB improvements, has further angered some Malibu Park residents by planting about 75 palm trees on its campus—trees that neighbors are already claiming will block their views.
Even though shrouded in this week’s heavy fog, the rows of trees have prompted some neighbors to question the sincerity of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s highly visible advertising campaign stressing its desire for maximum public involvement in the Measure BB planning process.
With no advance notice, the palms were planted over the Thanksgiving holiday on the hillside above the Girls and Boys Club facility and between the high school athletic fields and the asphalt parking lot and game courts.
Students at the school seemed blithely disinterested in the newlandscaping, although one was optimistic that the fast-growing palms might offer shade in the otherwise treeless expanse of fields and asphalt.
However, Malibu Park residents were less sanguine. “That’s a lot of palm trees,” one neighbor who requested anonymity told the Malibu Surfside News. “This isn’t an accent planting, it’s a full block-out. They’ll be really big, and they’ll block views.
“And they’re non-natives. [The school district] doesn’t even follow their own [landscaping] rules.”
The trees, identified as tropical queen palms, are native to South America and can grow swiftly to a height of 50 feet.
“This is a wind corridor up here,” said another neighbor who also declined to be named. “Palms like that, they have shallow roots and a huge, sail-like canopy. One good Santa Ana [wind], and they’ll be all over the place. But at least they’ll be blowing away over the school and not up here. They can’t even put up trash cans that won’t blow over,” the first resident complained.

Neither the school, nor the district, returned calls from The News about the trees.