Street Trees Condemned; Park Trees Preserved

Five towering trees were sentenced to death on a crowded west side street. Meanwhile, across town, stewards whacked at vines in a reclaimed park to enable other trees to survive and thrive.

Those were the situations on one-block Dayton Street and in Kimberly Park in Kimberly Square Monday (which happens to be the Jewish ​“New Year of the Trees”).

Death On Dayton

Dayton Street, a narrow two-lane two-way two-block one-tenth-mile continually car-congested connector between Fountain Street and Whalley Avenue, has just five street trees along its western side. The trees, four red maples and one elm, front houses; a CVS and commercial mini-plaza sit at the Whalley end of the street.

Dayton is part of state Route 122. So the state Department of Transportation (DOT) is requiring the removal of the trees.

The city is replacing the sidewalks on Dayton; some neighbors consider parts of it unnavigable, especially for people in wheelchairs. The city originally planned to do the sidewalk work without removing the trees. But it needs a DOT permit to do the work because of state ownership of the road. DOT insisted that the trees come down as part of approval for the permit. 

After signs went up on the trees about the imminent removal, some neighbors organized to try to save them.

One of the organizers, Ravenna Michalsen, listed reasons for opposing the removal in a social media post:

“1) no shade in a time of intense heat waves

“2) even more road pollution on a heavily trafficked road

“3) less oxygen production for residents

“4) even more unshaded blacktop between the street, the CVS parking lots and now unshaded sidewalk in a time of climate change crisis.”

“The trees are NOT diseased nor do they pose a threat. In fact, the much greater threat to humanity is continuing to cut down trees. They want to pave a sidewalk and need to do it while preserving the trees,” Michalsen argued.

Chad Mack, out on his front porch for a smoke break, said he hopes the removal is still in the works. He expressed concern about storm damage.

“It’s getting dangerous, with all the power lines. I’m worried it’s going to fall on a car,” he said.

Two of the four red maples are ​“in good condition,” and crews could work around them when putting in the sidewalk, concluded city Tree Warden Anastasia Shutts Mixsell. She wrote in a final decision issued last week that the other two red maples, while in good condition, might require removal in any case since their root systems might not survive construction. The elm ​“has significant tip dieback throughout the entire crown” and extensive deadwood, so ​“would absolutely be a candidate for removal,” she wrote.

Down the block, neighbor Daniel Fauck and frequent block visitor Molly rued the loss of the trees.

“It’s part and parcel of what it is to be a neighborhood” to have trees, said Molly (who declined to give her last name).

Fauck said ​“it would look bad” to lose the trees, which ​“add character.”

Those concerns were aired at a Jan. 31 public hearing about the tree removal. Afterwards, city Tree Warden Anastasia Shutts Mixsell issued her final decision on Feb. 1. She sided in spirit with the opponents — but argued the city has no choice.

“The trees along Dayton St fall under the jurisdiction of the State and as Tree Warden for the City of New Haven, I cannot decide to preserve the trees and work around them,” Mixsell wrote in the decision. (Click here to read it in full.)

“It is not the City’s policy to remove trees in good condition when completing a sidewalk project; the Engineering Department and the Tree Warden always work closely together to modify plans so that a tree is properly managed during the construction process. The City greatly appreciates all the benefits urban trees provide, but public safety and the ability to safely travel on Dayton St will need to take precedence over the trees in this case. The City will need to follow the State’s policy in order to get a permit and the trees will be removed.”

Mixsell wrote that she made another appeal to the state after the hearing to save the trees; DOT held firm to its position.

DOT spokesperson Joshua Morgan told the Independent that an agency arborist who checked out the trees determined they would ​“pose a safety concern” in the project ​“due to the compaction of the root system in the existing sidewalk area. In addition, the proposed sidewalk would further damage an already compromised root system. With safety as our number one priority, it was determined that these trees cannot be preserved.”

Moving forward, Mixsell promised to work with the city Engineering Department to strike a deal with DOT ​“to allow us to replace the lost trees and replant additional trees into vacant spaces with climate resilient species that are well suited to the narrow tree belt and heavy vehicular traffic plus associated pollutants.”

Neighbors reacted with skepticism to the promise to plant new trees.

Their state representative, Patricia Dillon, shared that skepticism in a social media post: ​“If anyone recalls the trees DOT planted in ​‘concrete coffins’ when they widened Whalley Ave, a promise to plant new trees is not only unnecessary, it’s not credible.” She urged people to support this bill she has proposed to ​“require DOT to follow a process that we set up last year for DEEP [Department of Energy & Environmental Protection] before they yank trees.” 

Work on the new sidewalk is planned for the spring.

Kindness On Kimberly

Across town at Kimberly Field, a bundled-up crew was working Monday morning to make sure trees emerge strong from the winter and new trees get the light and water they need to thrive.

The crew consisted of members of EMERGE — the agency that employs and trains ex-offenders reintegrating into society — and Urban Resources Initiative (URI), New Haven’s uber-tree-planting (10,000-and-counting) nonprofit.

URI is working with the city and the neighborhood to reclaim neglected Kimberly Field, the largest park in the ​“under-parked” Hill neighborhood. With the help of state money, the city and URI plan to relandscape, replace fences, plant trees, add benches and trash cans, and improve the basketball court, so neighbors can reclaim the park. A new tree-lined trail will connect Betsy Ross schoolkids to the waterfront through the park while shielding neighbors’ homes from noise. 

That’s coming soon. In the meantime, the URI/EMERGErs Monday morning were checking on the oaks and sweetgums currently surviving along the park’s eastern periphery hard by diesel-clouded I‑95.

URI Field Supervisor William Tisdale and EMERGE’s Drew Ramsey and Javon Hailey (pictured above) clipped invasive vines that were smothering an emerging oak tree and red osier dogwood peeping its first shoots out of the ground. They removed invasive vines from a mature weeping willow (pictured below); the vines can block needed water or sunlight or add weight that topples trees in storms.

They repeated that work along the park. URI’s Chris Ozyck had wrapped pink ribbons to mark the trees needing the de-vining. The crew also cleared debris from past homeless campers.

Winter mornings like Monday’s are actually ideal times to do this tree work in order to avoid nests that get built in warmer weather and migratory birds seeking places to rest while on their journeys, said Ozyck (pictured).

Plus, when the ground warms up, that’s the time to resume planting new trees.

Crew member Hailey (pictured) is looking forward to resuming that work.

“I’ve planted about 300 plus trees myself with the” crew,” Hailey, who’s 31, said during a conversation on the ​“Word on the Street” segment of WNHH FM’s ​“LoveBabz LoveTalk” program. ​“I learned so much during that time. I found it intriguing how much of an asset a tree can be to your life as well as the community.” He’s looking forward to helping hundreds of more arboreal lives to take hold in his hometown.

You can watch the full conversation with the EMERGE/URI crew on the ​“Word on the Street” segment of WNHHFM’s ​“LoveBabz LoveTalk” program in the video above.

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