Whole Foods Chops Down Whole Trees
By Michael
Zeno
Fourteen trees have been cut down
at the soon-to-be Whole Foods Market parking lot in Venice to make way for 'new'
trees.
It's disconcerting to return to a place you
know well and sense that eerie feeling that something is not right, like coming
home to find your door slightly ajar when you know you locked it tight. That's
exactly what happened on Feb. 27 when I pulled into the strip mall parking lot
off Lincoln Boulevard at Rose Avenue; something was missing, I thought. Then it
hit me...the trees!
The trees were
gone! Fourteen trees that encircled the lot had been unceremoniously cut down by
the contractor hired to begin remodeling the former Big Lots site for the new
Whole Foods Market. Only the mutilated stumps remained, festooned with yellow
caution tape, appropriately reminiscent of a crime scene.
Four of those felled were large trees,
with leafy green canopies that softened that asphalt nightmare like only trees
can. I'm not a tree-hugger, but I'm a tree-lover, and it's painful to witness
the indifference with which we destroy these living, breathing organisms that
oftentimes have been around for generations and add untold value to a space. We
already live in such a diminished natural environment, here in Venice, and
particularly at that intersection, - which makes incidents like this all the
more egregious.
Granted, sometimes you
have compelling reasons for tree removal, but it appears that Whole Foods plans
only to 're-landscape' the parking lot, which seems a little less than
compelling. Equally disturbing is the fact that this type of behavior stands in
direct opposition to the Whole Foods Market philosophy as environmental
stewards: "We see the necessity of active environmental stewardship so that the
earth continues to flourish for generations to come," they boldly assert in
their Declaration of Interdependence on their website.
It's also a very curious way to say
hello to a neighborhood where you expect to do business for the next 50 years;
or perhaps that particular part of Venice is not in their target demographic of
upscale shoppers paying upscale prices for upscale produce, so local residents
with an opinion were not consulted. Some of us will be senior citizens before we
see trees there the same size as some of the ones that were cut
down.
I attempted to contact Whole
Foods Market for an explanation, but couldn't get past a public relations
consultant who basically told me that the trees were removed to make room for
the new trees: "The tree removal was actually a step in the process of
re-landscaping the site," said Shawn Glasser of Mirror Mirror Public Relations
in an e-mail response to my questions; "At the completion of this project, the
site will have an abundance of trees, shrubs, and vines."
As a regular visitor to that strip
mall I can tell you first hand that I consider this an aggressive act of
ignorance and hypocrisy of the highest order from a company that boasts of
itself as environmental stewards. Despite their best 're-landscaping'
intentions, they deserve to be taken to task for their anti-environmental
actions.
Posted: Tue - April 1, 2008 at 08:18 PM
