I live up that way, so I stopped over at the standoff over an old sequoia the parks bureau wanted to cut down so the city can build a bridge linking Pier Park and Chimney Park and then a new road meant to be part of the North Portland Greenway Trail.
Protesters had turned out early this morning, and one was arrested and cited for trespassing after cops showed up and she pushed past the caution tape set up several dozen feet away from the tree. But by the time I showed, the scene was one of quiet resignation. And noise. The tree had been denuded of branches, which were being fed into a chipper. And a sawman was up top of it, hacking it down piece by piece.
Said one onlooker as a log dropped onto the damp dirt below with a dull thud: “It’s like a body.”
The road has to be big enough to handle trucks, which is part of the reason it couldn’t be drawn to go around the stand of trees. OH, AND THE CITY ALSO TOLD EVERYONE THE TREE WOULD HAVE TO GO SEVERAL MONTHS AGO after a long, involved public comment period that everyone apparently forgot about until it was time for the saws to start up. It’s not been much comfort to protesters that the city is planning on planting new trees and using the wood chips at a park in Westmoreland.
“I just want to emphasize again that if there was any other way that we could have proceeded with this project without removing the tree we certainly would have done that,” parks spokesman Mark Ross said. “It’s just not possible. This option had the least impact, and the public process has been going on for years.”
There’s much better coverage of this over on BikePortland *ahem*.
Sounds like “Friends of Pier Park” and the St. Johns Neighborhood Association have been involved all along and gave their blessing to this plan in order to save the rest of the grove.
I normally don’t like to be negative on the Internet. But god damn. People from St. John’s* need to lay off the pipe and booze every once in awhile.
*I live in St. John’s, so I can say whatever I want about my neighbors. I have years of regrettable experience.
They had to knock this down in order to allow a shortcut shot on the dog-leg 3rd hole of the frisbee golf course.
It’s a tree, for crying out loud.
A few years back I had to take out a pine in my backyard that had been topped several times before. Sure enough, some damn woman tried to flip me some shit about it when I was mowing the front.
“It’s like a body” ?? Oh, for fucks sake….puh-leeze.