So: What About Those Trees on the South Park Blocks?

 

Any discussion about the proposed master plan for Portland’s South Park Blocks settles to a single issue: How many of the 325 trees on the 12 blocks will or will not be lost? .

 What makes the topic difficult is the clear contradiction between verbiage in the South Parks Blocks Master Plan and what the plan’s own charts demonstrate.  One independent effort to determine how many trees are at risk came up with a total of 86, but acknowledged that parts of the plan are difficult to interpret. 

 For starters, look at a document provided by an arborist who consulted on the plan for the city.  This is the same consultant who reported in 2019 that 97 percent of the parks trees are healthy. The report suggests 26 trees for removal and another 65 for “optional removal.”

 

The next chart shows characteristic tree spacing in the Cultural District, the six northern blocks.  All of these blocks would be included in the proposed Green Loop for bicycles and scooters.  The chart shows a reduction per block from 42 to 27 trees, including the large row of elms adjacent to the bike paths.  Those elms apparently would be replaced with smaller trees. 

 

 

The “tree succession plan” in the Cultural District, shown below,  makes it clear the long-term consequence: The central row of the five current rows is eliminated, and only two of the five would remain as they are recognized today.  These charts are included because some of my readers last week insisted no trees would be removed. 

 

These charts make it difficult to accept the written report that says “no healthy trees” would be removed.

 It is interesting to note that in 2005, the Parks Bureau issued a publication titled, “South Park Blocks: Benefits of Trees.”  Jerry Poracsky, a PSU geography professor, wrote, in part, “The most prominent feature of the area is the trees…the predominant trees of the South Park Blocks are American elms and it is these large, graceful sentinels that do most to create the special character of the area…

 “Like a rough-hewn colonnade, five rows of trees stretch the length of the twelve blocks, creating a high canopy that shelters the grass, walkways, and benches below. From the center, looking either to the north or south between any two rows of trees, you have a vista down a long, green, arched tunnel narrowing into an indistinct vanishing point blocks away.”

“The aesthetic value is hard to measure…What price can you put on the experience of sitting in the South Park Blocks on a warm summer afternoon, gazing down long rows of majestic American elms? The feelings of relaxation and enjoyment one experiences in such a beautiful, treed urban green space just cannot be duplicated.”

 But they CAN be seriously impaired.

-----Fred Leeson

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