Nikki Sirken couldn’t believe what she didn’t see.
On the sidewalk in front of her house Tuesday, where a thick sycamore had once stood, there was now only a foot-high stump.
“I came home,” she said, “and I cried.”
The 73-year-old Heights resident had grown up and old with the two trees in front of her Summit Avenue home. The initials of her first boyfriend had been carved in the trunk of one of the hundred-year-old trees when she was 14.
It’s gone now, and in fact, it’s part of about 20 ash and sycamores that will be seeing the buzzsaw on Summit Avenue between Secaucus Road and state highway 139.
But hold on a minute – there’s a good reason for the felling, said the city last week.
The trees wreak havoc on sidewalks, power lines, streets and sewers, they say.
“Yes, they’ve been there a long time,” said Rodney Hadley, the city’s Director of Parks and Forestry, “but that’s a problem.”
New sidewalks and streets that will be installed along the road, part of a $1.2 million state grant, could not be “graded” properly with the knotty roots there, Hadley said. The trees are too big. Sidewalks buckle up around the roots, and the trunks take up a large portion of sidewalk.
That assertion was met with a skeptical eye by some residents.
“If they can build the World Trade Center,” said Sherman Place resident Andrea Lew, “they can figure out how to put in a sidewalk around a tree.”
Others stood outside last Wednesday and watched bitterly as the contractors from Friendly Tree Service of East Orange hacked down the timber.
“This is called progress,” said Denise, a Summit Avenue resident who declined to give her last name. She was joined by Donald Brummer of Hutton Street.
“It’s a shame,” he said, “what they did with these trees.”
It’s not just their shade, they said; it’s the oxygen and the intrinsic value they provide to a community.
The city will be providing 167 new trees, 12- to15-foot maples that will be planted as the sidewalks are finished, said Hadley. Though they’re quick-growing trees, he acknowledged that it would take 20 to 30 years for them to reach a mature height of 70 feet. The roots of the maples tend to grow straight down, so they won’t buckle the sidewalks.
But one need only look at the patch of dirt in the sidewalk in front of Denise’s residence on Summit Avenue to give pause. For the past several years, she has bought three trees through a special city program. Each of them has died, she said.
No warning
Though the project had begun in the fall, with work completed on a portion of Summit and Palisade avenues, the contractor had stopped for the winter. Department of Public Works Director Kevin Sluka said the city prodded Friendly Tree Service to finish the job. He said that public hearings and meetings with resident groups had warned that the trees would be coming down. But when residents came home Tuesday to find stumps, some in the city voiced concern that, still, not enough warning had been given.
“It’s a matter of policy for DPW not to take down trees without people knowing it,” said Council President Tom DeGise, a Heights resident.
“There’s a need for us to have more trees, not less,” said Downtown Councilman Mariano Vega. The council instructed Corporation Counsel Sean Connelly to look into amending the tree-cutting process, who suggested the matter could be taken up by the city Planning Board.
It’s unlikely, however, that a resident would be able to prevent the felling of a tree.
The replacing of sidewalks and resurfacing of roads will continue along Summit and Palisade avenues. Trees also have been coming down along Duncan Avenue, near Lincoln Park.