Run, forest. Run
  • Tonya Ray
  • Run, forest. Run

Near the intersection of SE Hawthorne and 44th there once were three 100-foot-tall trees. Now there’s just three sad stumps and a warning: RUN, FOREST. RUN.

Here’s what that block looked like before:

In better days.

Earlier in 2015, a group of concerned people were able to save three 100-plus-year-old giant Sequoia trees in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, but many of Portland’s older trees aren’t so lucky.

These trees were located on property at 1515 SE 44th Ave., and, according to Portland Maps, it’s owned by an entity called The Truman LLC. The owner of that company, Don Mutal, is a Portland developer.


Here’s what will be on the property after construction begins early next year:

The Truman
  • In Situ Architecture
  • The Truman

Many Portlanders are concerned with what they see as the destruction of important trees around the city.

On the Stop Demolishing Portland Facebook page, many people who drove by the stumps over the weekend expressed shock and sadness that they’d been removed. In a lengthy Nextdoor conversation, many Mt. Tabor residents also said they wished the trees hadn’t become victims of the chainsaws.

Unsurprisingly, the Audubon Society of Portland is one of those groups. Audubon has come up with a set of reforms they’re suggesting the city implement to better protect trees from being cut down and replaced with new construction.

There will be a Portland Planning and Sustainability Commission (1900 SW 4th Ave) hearing at 12:30 pm, Jan 12 in Room 2A. Audubon suggests people who want to see the city’s code reformed attend the hearing to “give testimony and/or stand in support” of their proposed reforms.

17 replies on “Three More Giant Trees Were Hacked Down in the Name of Progress”

  1. Well then. At it least the building won’t be a big gray box that nobody can afford to live in like all the goddamn others in this goddamn city jesus christ.

  2. You know that a woman was killed this week when a giant tree fell on her house right? Maybe there is kind of a maximum size of tree that it is actually desirable to have within city limits.

  5. I want MORE trees cut down. To be precise, the ones on the downtown transit mall that host hordes of shitting crows for half the year.

  6. Well, those aren’t 100 feet. They’re probably not even native to Northwest Oregon. And Portland development is based on a progressive concept of urban management which requires high density living. The idea is to save forests and farmland outside the city by building up and using space within a confined urban growth boundary. The tree huggers here have their priorities all mixed up.

  7. “RUN FOREST RUN”

    You realize they are trees, and have very limited mobility, right? Besides, three trees don’t make a forest. Although this is a kind of historical preservation. Okay, I’m conflicted.

  8. Yeah, too bad these will be yet more “market rate” units that will only help renters who possess the means to be choosy about where they want to live and play. The density cheerleaders pretend this will create a ripple effect that lets affordable housing trickle down to the poors… somehow. Someday. I’ll believe it when I see it.

  9. @chunty, we tried your plan over the last decade, during which time we have been adding far more people than housing. It has produced skyrocketing rents. The city needs more housing, not 3 giant non-native trees.

  11. Oh, look: the Nextdoor troll is on the Merc now! He says, “The city is for concrete! take yer damn chickens and trees outside the urban growth boundary.”

  12. Haha! Poor little sensitive nextdoor person! So sweet. Good to see ya venture out beyond the protective borders of nextdoor! Nice work. And yah chickens no Bueno in the city. Oh wait, did I say that somewhere else? :). Or maybe they’re fine.

  13. “My” plan? I wasn’t aware that I’d suggested anything.

    What’s going on here, putting the tree issue aside for a moment (and who cares if they’re “native”, btw? They’re nice old trees, not english ivy you simpleton fuckshits) is that anything that can be cashed out by property owners is being liquidated. The owners win, the developers win, the newcomers win and the long-term residents not making at-or-around-six-figures get fucked. (Here’s where you suggest that everyone just “learns how to code” or whatever Creative Class Reaganomics your pseudo-liberal parents raised you on.)

    Basically the Hawthorne / Division / Belmont / Alberta / Mississippi of today is a rich person’s playground and the income bar gets set higher with every passing day. “Density” pencils out in your urban planning class and looks great to the Californians who don’t know any better (can’t miss what you were never around to experience lol). But I’ll miss the Portland where not everything was an AmericanApparel-2.0-clad fauxberjack pulling his espresso / microbrew / man-bun-pud behind a LEED certified glass garage door. I hope a giant bioswale opens up along the length of Burnside and swallows Nü Portland whole.

  14. Focusing on the fate of one or a few trees on a developing urban property is somewhat myopic. 1. The number of trees that are sacrificed and utilized in the construction of most structures is significant. 2. A single tree requires a significant amount of natural area to thrive, the larger the tree the more required space. 3. We have a housing shortage, people are losing their homes in a low supply high demand environment. -To sacrifice livable units for the sake of one or two on-site trees (considering 10x that number of equally beautiful and carbon sequestering trees are likely fallen to make the building) while simultaneously complaining of a housing shortage and high rents is downright silly. New trees will be planted and the circle of life will continue. Want to save local trees? Direct public funds to create more parks. Encourage more street tree planting. Be appreciative of our urban growth boundary for the forests it preserves and embrace the concept of urban!!!

  15. Street trees are for traffic slowing and nominal urban heat island cooling, they do not come anywhere near the pollution mitigation capabilities those conifers (which probably were natives) had. Hawthorne just got that much uglier.

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