CITY'S MIDNIGHT TREE MASSACRE A SHADY DEAL.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

``This isn't Santa Monica. It's the Valley. It gets hot out here.''

- Shirley Ippolito owner of Sadie's Antiques in Canoga Park

The city work crews showed up late at night about a month ago with their chain saws and tree stump grinders, ready to cut down 30 blooming, fruitless pear trees that had been standing for almost three decades along Antique Row in Old Canoga Park.

Showed up ready to cut them down while Shirley Ippolito, Bob Lloyd, Pat Needham, Hugh Burton and many of the other 24 antique-shop owners making a living along the historic row were home asleep.

That way they couldn't raise a stink, the shop owners say - couldn't make good with their threat to stage a big demonstration if the city tried to cut down the shade trees along a four-block stretch of Sherman Way, from Canoga to Jordan avenues, which is undergoing a face lift as part of the Canoga Park Streetscape Program.

Many of these shop owners were prepared to join arms in a human picket around the trees, if necessary, they said. A few, like Ippolito, were even ready to chain themselves to the tree in front of their own stores to stop the buzz saws.

They never got the chance. They were all at home sleeping when the city's crews showed up to do the job.

``The trees were cut down at night so as not to disrupt their businesses during the day,'' said Leslie Lambert, project director for the city's Community Redevelopment Agency, which is overseeing the street improvements.

``We didn't think people would want to be stepping over tree branches and listening to buzz saws while they shopped,'' she added.

Maybe not, the antique store owners say, but it certainly made the city's job a lot easier not having them around to protest the trees being cut down.

``I turned the corner to come to work one morning, and they (the trees) were all gone,'' Ippolito said. ``My mouth just fell open. They had come and cut them all down at night when no one was here. I just started to cry.''

Hugh Burton, owner of Courtyard Antiques, had much the same reaction. ``In one night, the city turned our street into a desert,'' he said.

The shock of the antique dealers along the row quickly turned to anger. Now, a month later, it's mainly just a lot of frustration and incredulity.

Summer's here, and temperatures are climbing to 100 degrees, and there isn't a lick of shade to be found along their street.

The big, old pear trees that cooled things down along the row and gave shoppers a chance to walk the street and park their cars in shade have been replaced with nothing.

Palm trees are on the drawing board for late August to beautify the area. But like Ippolito says, this isn't Santa Monica with its cool, ocean breezes.

It's the Valley, and it gets hot. Tall, skinny palm trees with a few denser pink trumpet trees placed at the end of the blocks just aren't going to provide enough precious shade in front of their stores, say 67 business owners who've signed petitions to have the city put in Jacaranda trees instead.

They lost that fight, too. Too messy, too much water, the city said.

Word started spreading on antique row last year that something serious was up.

``We heard the city had sent out a so-called tree expert who said the trees on our street were coming to the end of their life cycle, and many of them were diseased,'' said Bob Lloyd, who owns the Antique Store, and spent 17 years in the nursery and tree business before opening his antique shop three years ago.

``It was a bunch of hooey,'' Lloyd said Monday. ``Those trees were fine. Some just needed more watering. They weren't dying. So what if they were old? Old trees are beautiful trees.''

Lambert says her agency's landscape architect disagreed. ``The end for those trees may not have been tomorrow or the next day, but it was getting very close,'' she said. ``Many of them were diseased.''

Lambert and Juan Rodriguez, field deputy for Councilwoman Laura Chick, said the antique-store owners had their chance to voice their opposition to the city by attending Public Works Commission meetings.

``None of them ever showed up to my knowledge,'' Rodriguez said.

Pat Needham, owner of Now & Then Antiques, and Burton said the dealers didn't show because they had businesses to run.

``Most of us are one-person operations, and some of us are open seven days a week to make a living,'' Burton said. ``If we close our doors, there's no business.''

Lambert and Rodriguez said that in six or seven community meetings held at night to discuss replacing the trees, the feedback from the local chamber of commerce and people attending was for a tree that would not block existing storefronts so that people driving by could see the signage.

The antique-store owners say shade, not signage, is more important to their businesses and the customers strolling along Antique Row.

``We tried to explain to them that this is the Valley, and it gets over 100 degrees out here during the summer,'' Lloyd said. ``We don't need palm trees; we need shade.''

Lambert said that if they want shade give her office a call. There's CRA money to buy all the stores along the row shade awnings, she said.

``All they have to do is ask,'' she said. ``But as far as the trees, we're talking dead horse here. They're gone.''

Cut down late at night while the protesters slept.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

PHOTO Sherman Way antique-shop owners, from left, Shirley Ippolito, Hugh Burton, Pat Needham and Bob Lloyd stand along their now-denuded sidewalk.

Tom Mendoza/Daily News