Politics & Government

Colorado Boulevard Median to Get a Facelift

A proposed pilot project will bring drought-tolerant trees and shrubs to the median between Argus Drive and Hermosa Avenue.

In recent weeks Colorado Boulevard has been the focus of two high-profile community events—the Eagle Rock Music Festival on Oct. 1 and two well-attended meetings last month of the latest neighborhood effort to “Take Back the Boulevard.”

What many people probably don’t know is that a relatively low-key effort to make Colorado Boulevard greener has also been underway for nearly the past year—and residents got the latest glimpse of this initiative earlier this week.

On Tuesday night, at , the Colorado Boulevard Median Advisory Committee unveiled its first draft proposal for a pilot project on a stretch of the median between Argus Drive and Hermosa Avenue, facing the to the boulevard’s south and to the north.

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Taking Back the Boulevard—With Native Vegetation

The project, supported and coordinated by the office of , shares the aims of the Take Back the Boulevard initiative to improve Colorado's access to pedestrians and cyclists.

Find out what's happening in Eagle Rockwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The project consists of six members: Landscape architect Allen Compton, architect Jack Burnett Stuart, landscape designer Jane Tsong, community gardening veterans Helen and David Gustavson, and arborist Mike Woodward.

At the meeting, the members presented the draft proposal’s key components, ranging from technical details such as engineering, storm water collection, road characteristics and finances to tree and shrub selection, as well as the design of the vegetation arrangement.

Seven trees from two drought-tolerant varieties—California Sycamore and California Coast Live Oak—have been chosen for the median project. The idea is to plant two California Coast Live Oaks in the center of the median, with three California Sycamores on the median’s eastern edge and two on the western edge.

Interspersed between the trees will be six drought-tolerant varieties of shrubs: Indian Mallow, Creeping Mountain Lilac, Cape Rush, Blue Bedder, Canyone Prince Wild Rye and Low Coast Rosemary. Besides the ecological benefits of planting drought-tolerant trees and the shrubs, the vegetation is also expected to give a sense of identity to Eagle Rock, reinforcing its place as a foothill community.

Why Medians—And What's Next?

The pilot project was inspired by calls from residents and community volunteers to maintain the vegetation on Colorado Boulevard’s medians, many of which had become public eyesores because of a lack of irrigation arising from cuts in the City’s budget starting in mid-2010. Huizar’s office hopes that the pilot project will become a blueprint for further improvements along the boulevard.

The next step in the project is to analyze feedback from both community members and City departments. The feedback will be incorporated into the median’s design after preparing a cost estimate, which will be presented to the community. A more complete draft proposal will be presented at a subsequent public meeting.

Eagle Rock resident Ryan Johnson, an Urban Planning student at UCLA who attended Tuesday’s Colorado Boulevard Median Advisory Committee meeting, contributed to this article.


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