Left rectangle ads redesigned
Robert Ripps book
History of Tribeca Buildings
Nosy Neighbor: What happened to our trees?
M. wrote from 7-9-11-13 Worth: “We have a mystery we are trying to solve. Up until this past Tuesday, we had four beautiful trees and four gorgeous iron tree guards outside of our coop building. Two out of the four tree pits have now been completely demolished. The trees were removed as well as the iron guards. The remaining two tree pits remain untouched, trees and guards intact. It looks like it was the work of the city as there is white spray paint around the tree pits that were removed.”
The residents there, she said, paid for the iron tree guards as well as one of the trees, which they bought and planted in 2018 after the tree in its spot had died.
I sent three emails to the Department of Transportation for an explanation, before I figured out it was the Parks Department (duh, I guess, since I know full well that they deal with street trees) and just got this answer:
Parks Department forestry staff are in the process of preparing for the spring tree planting season and have new trees and tree guards planned for this area. The trees are expected to be planted in late May, and new tree guards will be installed by the end of June.
The Parks Department will replace the tree guards with design B — shown below.
M. replied when I filled her in: “We were all kind of stunned by the response because the two trees they took were incredibly healthy trees, the most healthy of the four in front of our building. In addition, they cite that the trees were in poor shape likely following the crane collapse and subsequent work on Worth Street, however, one of those trees was planted by our building after the street construction and was thriving. And why they took new iron tree guards also makes no sense, and is upsetting because we are a small building and the guards were very expensive (and looked beautiful).”
5 Comments
Comment:
Medium rectangle #1 (top)
Right column rectangle ads
Restaurant guide icon
File a claim against the city in civil court. Sounds pretty simple, esp if the Coop has records of the purchases of the iron tree guards and the tree. Might not even have to hire counsel. File it electronically, too.
I agree that this is an example of government incompetence. They’ve probably had it on their to-do list since 2018: “Replace the dead tree on Worth Street.” Sure, it took seven years and there was a perfectly good tree standing there but the bureaucracy won’t be stopped from fulfilling their task of planting a tree.
That said, I doubt the co-op has a claim for iron guards and a tree that were on city property and removed by the city. With or without receipts.
Contact Christopher Marte’s office. They are very big on trees.
Christopher Marte was contacted and he responded directly. He was given the same information as reported here,
Seems like this is related to the markings on Chambers that indicate a new tree bed will be planted. Contract was awarded, which included a new guard and tree, regardless of what was there. One part of the job is to prepare the tree bed and the second one is to plant.
Indicative of a lag between award of a contract and implementation – plus absence of any oversight/project management that would avoid common sense mistakes like this.
Would be interesting to know what the coop planted? Maybe the city has a reason for only certain street trees to be planted. Certainly wouldn’t want smelly ginkgo for example.