April 27, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

Fake tree to grow in Barron Park

by Jocelyn Dong

Palo Alto, the city of trees, will add a 40-foot-tall fake one to its leafy inventory, much to the disappointment of some Barron Park neighbors.

The tree, described as "magnolia-esque" by one city planner, is intended to camouflage a cell-phone tower for service provider T-Mobile. It will stand in the parking lot of Blockbuster Video at 3990 El Camino Real.

Five residents turned out for the Palo Alto City Council meeting Monday night to voice their opposition to the proposed plastic tree, which they called unsightly, unnecessary and even dangerous.

A representative for the phone company, William Stephens, said the tower would ensure optimal service to cell-phone users in the neighborhood. The tower would boost radio signals for about one-half to three-quarters of a mile, he said.

Neighbor Edward Jones, however, held up a T-Mobile cell phone during his comments to the council, saying the reception he receives in his Barron Park home is just fine. The phone even works inside the Blockbuster store, he said.

The proposal included conditions that the landlord, Toufic Jisser, landscape the parking lot and maintain the real foliage so the fake tree doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. But neighbors brought photos of the Blockbuster site that they said showed poor current landscape maintenance. They said they held little hope that Jisser would follow through on the promised landscaping connected with the tower.

The council approved the plan 4-2, with Mayor Jim Burch, Vice Mayor Judy Kleinberg, and Council members LaDoris Cordell and Jack Morton supporting it. Council members Yoriko Kishimoto and Hillary Freeman opposed the tower, and Council members Bern Beecham, Dena Mossar and Victor Ojakian were absent.

Palo Alto has a handful of other cell-towers-cum -fake-trees, including one at Fire Station No. 2 on Hanover Street. They are typically modeled after evergreen or redwood trees. The Blockbuster tree will be the city's first broadleaf-style cell tower.

Also Monday night, the council approved 6-0 the Channing Avenue traffic plan that has been in place on a trial basis for a year.

A staff report stated that traffic speeds along the stretch of Channing that extends from Guinda Street and Greer Road in north Palo Alto have decreased by 3 to 16 percent, and that the number of vehicles using the road dropped from 5 to 8 percent.

The project uses several methods to slow traffic: speed tables, center medians, a raised crosswalk and an electronic sign.

Hundreds of school children from the Crescent Park, Duveneck/St. Francis and Community Center neighborhoods use the road every day. Duveneck Elementary School and St. Elizabeth Seton School are located on Channing, and other schools are nearby.

Like many traffic projects in Palo Alto, the trial drew both praise and criticism. In a survey of neighbors, 51 percent of residents living on Channing Avenue or attached cul-de-sacs approved of the trial, while 22 percent opposed it. The rest did not respond or expressed neither support nor opposition.

Of the neighbors living further away, 19 percent approved of the traffic project and 14 percent opposed it. Some residents offered their own modifications of the trial.

Vice Mayor Judy Kleinberg raised a concern that the survey results showed a lack of overwhelming support for traffic-calming projects, both in the Channing case and for past projects. She pointed out that other local cities require a supermajority of residents to approve of a traffic-management scheme before it is permanently installed.

"Every survey we've taken shows this is not where the majority of our residents want us to spend our money," she said.

However, Chief Transportation Official Joe Kott replied that even for local elections, a turnout of greater than 40 percent of eligible voters is rare.

As a condition of the council's approval, the current speed tables -- which neighbors complained were too jarring -- will be demolished and rebuilt. Re-doing them, and adding landscaping to the project's center medians, will add another $14,000 to the $68,000 project.

During the trial, a portion of Channing that had been slated for traffic calming -- between Greer Road and West Bayshore Road -- was omitted, after residents could not come to an agreement on the devices to be used along their blocks, according to the city staff. Now that the trial is over, if those residents wish to have a traffic project, they will have to jump back in line with every other neighborhood in the city request traffic relief, said Planning and Community Environment Director Steve Emslie.

Also Monday night, the council approved of increasing utility-service call and connection fees, which city staff reported have not been covering the costs of operations. The vote was 4-2, with Burch, Morton, Kishimoto and Freeman supporting the increase, and Kleinberg and Cordell opposing.

Senior Staff Writer Jocelyn Dong can be reached at jdong@paweekly.com.

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