GILROY
– Chainsaws at South Valley Plaza are creating quite a buzz.
Contractors hired by Trinity Property Consultants, owners of the
shopping strip mall for about two months, began cutting down and
shredding ash and liquidambar trees, some as tall as 40 feet high
and 30 years old.
GILROY – Chainsaws at South Valley Plaza are creating quite a buzz.
Contractors hired by Trinity Property Consultants, owners of the shopping strip mall for about two months, began cutting down and shredding ash and liquidambar trees, some as tall as 40 feet high and 30 years old.
It’s all part of an ongoing renovation effort that will also entail repainting the plaza, repaving the parking lot and installing new light fixtures.
“We want to clean up the property and make it directly visible from the street,” said James Estrada, senior vice president of the commercial division of Trinity.
What’s one man’s obstacle to visibility, however, is another’s passion.
“This is a sin,” said Wayne Spurlock, manager of facilities and transportation for an area school district. “Those trees provide oxygen and shade. … I can’t believe the city would give them a permit to take out so many trees.”
Initial requests were even more drastic, according to City Planner Gregg Polubinsky.
“They wanted to take down all of the trees,” he said, “But the city looked into reasons behind this and decided it was not necessary to take them all down.”
After consulting a tree specialist, the city decided to allow 85 trees to be cut down, Polubinsky said. This includes trees on the perimeter of the plaza bordering the freeway, as well as trees at the main entrance.
While this puts the plaza in plain view from the freeway, some customers feel removing the trees is excessive.
“There’s no reason to take them down,” said Belen Morales, who often does her grocery shopping there. “(The plaza has) been here for so long, it’s not like people don’t know it’s here.”
Spurlock shares those sentiments.
“If the trees were diseased then I can see why this would happen. But these were perfectly healthy trees,” Spurlock said, adding that another option would have been to replant the trees elsewhere.
Ash and liquidambar trees tend to have shallow and large root systems.
“The trees were doing obvious damage to the sidewalks,” said Polubinsky. He adds that findings from an arborist report said the trees’ roots were disturbing underground water lines.
“It’s too late for these trees now,” said Spurlock, gesturing towards a row of tree trunks in the parking lot. “Hopefully other shopping centers won’t do the same.”
Renovations and new trees will be put in within three or four months, said Estrada.
