Seven
big trees went horizontal last week on the Rundel Park mall, victims of the
desire for a wider street.
Rundel Park, a quiet
non-thoroughfare just opposite the newly refurbished Atlantic-University intersection,
is being upgraded with new curbs, pavement, and street lights. And its
generously wide mall will be landscaped and reseeded. It’s all part of the
city’s regular street maintenance and reconstruction schedule.
But there’s a significant blip
in the plan: The traffic lanes on either side of the Rundel mall are being
widened — from the current 15 feet to 17 feet. (There was even a possibility
of 18 feet, but that option was clipped.)
The widening doomed the seven
trees, all of them substantial. One of the trees was itself historic: a sugar
maple around 125 years old, by our ring count. The old specimen made the fatal
error of growing within a foot or so of the existing curb, which in American
culture automatically gets the right-of-way.
Environmental Commissioner
Edward Doherty says City Hall is just following the wishes of Rundel Park
neighbors, though he admits that losing the trees is unfortunate. “There are
trade-offs,” he says, “but at least there was a high degree of community
involvement on this one.”
Doherty trains the light on
traffic. “Vehicles were routinely driving on the mall,” he says. The existing
lane width, he says, was “substandard.” There were complaints that vehicles
parked on the street were getting sideswiped, says Doherty, and that emergency
vehicles and snowplows sometimes had a tough time squeezing through.
Three options went before the
Preservation Board, says Doherty. One option was a “mountable curb,” an angled
curbstone with a narrow paved strip inboard. This would have allowed vehicles
to drive up over the curb without rutting the mall, as they have been doing
informally. With this option, the lane width could have been kept to 16 feet,
Doherty says. But the board, says Doherty, said no to the option.
“We’ve been working on this
for five years,” says Sandra Whitford, president of the Rundel Park
Neighborhood Association. “When we had that terrible snow a few years ago,
nobody could get in or out.” Whitford adds that it’s not just emergency
vehicles, moving vans, and garbage trucks that have had trouble navigating the
street — it’s also some SUVs.
The neighborhood group, says
Whitford, originally wanted the mountable curb and 16-foot width, but went with
a 17-foot compromise after the Preservation Board made its determination. In
any case, she says, “they’re going to put in new trees.”
“It probably needed to
happen,” says the Landmark Society’s Peter Siegrist about the widening and
removals. Siegrist, who observed the vetting process, says the changes were
needed to keep the neighborhood improving. “We need to get people to stay in
those neighborhoods [as homeowners] for as long as possible,” he says. What’s
happening now on Rundel Park, he concedes, “is not pure preservation.”
But couldn’t the street have
been rebuilt while leaving the width at 15 feet, keeping the chain saws away
from the trees? What about examples like Philadelphia’s historic Center City,
where some very popular streets aren’t wide enough to allow cars at all, parked
or moving?
“Leaving it alone was
certainly an option, but the neighbors really wanted it improved,” says
Siegrist. “We can’t compare ourselves to any of these larger cities,” he says.
In places like Philly, he says, commuting is difficult, and thus centuries-old
streetscapes in the thick of things are in high demand (and home prices are in
the seven figures).
Questions are emerging about
the vetting process in this case. As Siegrist says, there were several
opportunities for people — on or off Rundel Park — to put their two cents
in. Yet the project, or at least the full dimensions of it, caught some people
by surprise. City Newspaper learned
of the tree-cutting via an anonymous call; the man, who said he was a Rundel
Park renter, complained about the destruction of the trees and claimed that
renters on the street were left out of the process. Some other
Atlantic-University neighbors said they were shocked as well.
Due notice was given, say
people close to the planning process. Yet even the City Hall website’s official
“street construction update” lacks some important details. The relevant notices
mention “new pavement, new curb, driveway aprons, and receiving basins, spot
sidewalk replacement; new street lighting system; and topsoil and seeding.” The
construction schedule appears, too, along with suggestions for parking during
work hours. The notice contains nothing specific about lane-widening or tree
removal.
But another kind of notice may
be given: Such widenings and other “improvements” could be coming to other
streets, that is, to other narrow, historic streets in the city’s oldest
neighborhoods. “The Arnold Park people,” says Peter Siegrist, “have been
watching this.” The lanes on Arnold Park are a few inches narrower than the
old, full 15 feet on Rundel Park.
This article appears in Jul 31 – Aug 6, 2002.
