The last weekend for the Sherwin Williams trees
Chainsaw Looming Next Week After Citizens Lose a Multi-Year Battle to Save the Trees
Emeryville tree lovers have likely lost a multi-year battle to save blocks of public street trees on Horton Street after a contentious City Council meeting on Tuesday night. Lennar development workers today removed the protective straw wrappings from around the public street trees joining the Sherwin Williams project after the developer, working with the city staff, invoked a little known and never before used ‘nuclear option’ back door in Emeryville’s Urban Forrest Ordinance (UFO) enabling the for profit development corporation to cut down all the people’s trees without oversight from the elected officials. The removal of the protective wrapping for the trees, running for three blocks along Horton Street, indicated Lennar and the City will likely move forward with their plan to cut down all the trees despite an announced emergency grassroots citizen proposal to save the trees until voters can weigh in on the issue in November.
In the days to come, the Tattler will report a detailed piece on Tuesday night's last ditch use of the UFO nuclear option by the staff and Lennar. The option, inserted into the UFO by staff several years ago, has never been optioned and was considered by many to be too bold for a developer to leverage barring some kind of emergency. The Tattler reported that the trees were saved after Lennar lost a split Council vote two years ago to cut them all.
In the meanwhile come and say good bye to the trees that will likely all be killed to enhance Lennar’s profit margin in the controversial Sherwin Williams housing project.
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| The corner of Sherwin and Horton Street looking north. |
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| Workers took the protective wrappings off the trees today (seen cast against the building). |
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| Come Say Good Bye By Friday evening they'll likely all be cut down. |
Where can we find out how each of the council members voted? How could it have been a split vote before if there are five of them? Who changed their vote?
ReplyDeleteThe vote from two years ago was split 2-2, Council member Bauters being recused because proximity of his home to the project. A split vote equates to a NO. This time, Lennar safeguarded against the same split vote (Donahue/Patz NO, Martinez/Medina YES) by securing the nuclear option behind the scenes ahead of time. After Mayor Martinez announced Lennar was invoking the nuclear option and would cut the trees with or without the Council's blessing, Council member Patz changed his vote to YES. So the final vote was 3-1 (Donahue dissenting). All this and more will be featured in the coming Tattler story. It was high drama and low politics.
DeleteAnyone interested in having a group ritual for the trees? I live up the street and -- I'm free this weekend!
ReplyDeleteI was an Emeryville resident from 1975- 1981 and Emeryville at this time had very few trees. It was more of an industrial feeling to it. The removal of these trees is paying homage to an earlier time and should be treated as such.
ReplyDeleteI would rather see new trees thrive with new and level sidewalks than watch the old trees continue to die with broken and uneven sidewalks which are hazardous to pedestrians and bicyclists
ReplyDeleteThe trees were determined to be healthy by the City's arborist. New trees will only thrive until they start uplifting the sidewalks in probably 5 years or so. That's what happens when you have trees in your city...they break the sidewalks and cause them to lift. That's what's happened on the other side of the street too. The trees there are only about 10 years old and the City has already replaced the sidewalks once. The new sidewalks are already failing again two years after replacement. Sidewalk lifting...Same with the new trees on Park Avenue; they're cracking and lifting the sidewalks. The Pixar trees too; same story. In fact most trees in Emeryville are "nuisance" trees and therefore are bad for pedestrians and bicyclists. But remember, the "nuisance" sobriquet was only recently invoked. Before that these Sherwin Williams trees were slated to be killed because they were called "unhealthy" by the staff...then the official arborist corrected them, after that, the staff said the trees would be in the way of the underground utilities and must be killed. Then that was disproven as well until they finally came up with the nuisance declaration.
DeleteYou may not like trees, but public policy should be objective and evidence based, regardless of what the developers want.
"Park" Avenue should be renamed to "Car Storage Avenue". If so much public space wasn't devoted to acres of asphalt for moving and storing private vehicles, we wouldn't have to make such a false choice between trees and safe places to walk & roll... But everything that's not open asphalt for urban assault machines has to be crammed to the margin and fight for scraps.
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