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Endeavour Comes to the Science Center

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Category: Community News

Published on Friday, 05 October 2012 17:18

Written by Dianne Lawrence

Hey! What Happened to the Trees?

The good news? On October 13, after a 12 mile ride from LAX along La Tijera, Manchester, Crenshaw, and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards, the Space Shuttle Endeavour arrives at its new home in the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center at the California Science Center where it will be displayed along with engaging videos and artifacts. It is considered a feather in Los Angeles’ cap.

The Endeavour was built to replace the ill-fated Challenger and was the fifth and final space shuttle NASA built.  It flew 25 missions, orbited the earth more than 4,600 times for a total of 122,853,151 miles and spent 299 days in space.

The bad news? Nearly 400 trees along the route, many of them in their 80’s, have been cut down to accommodate the width of the shuttle. As expected the community was in an uproar claiming this would have never happened if the route had gone through Beverly Hills. They showed up in full force at the Board of Public Works hearing to let their concerns be heard. “I’m tired of people coming to our community and doing things behind our backs and then at the last minute inviting us to the meetings and it’s already too late,” Ayana McCowen, 39, said to a boisterous crowd. But it was a done deal before they got there. Ron Finley, a community activist wondered, “How and why do they continue to treat our community with such disrespect and disregard?”

Promises used to soften the blow included: planting four trees for every tree cut down, $400,000 toward tree trimming, up to five years of tree maintenance and $500,000 to improve the city streets. The concern about planting replacement trees so small that nobody will see a full grown tree in their lifetime got a promise to have larger trees installed. The California Science Center also agreed to provide at least 10 scholarships to area students, pay $100,000 to an education fund and train local teachers in science. Local youths will be hired to perform at least half of the tree maintenance. The community wonders who will be in charge of ensuring all of these things get done.

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