Ellington

In light of tree-removal conflicts that occurred regarding the Elm Hall student housing project on Northeast Campus Parkway, UW’s Capital Projects Office is taking more precautions while planning the five student-apartment buildings that will replace Mercer Hall.

Jon Lebo, UW interim director for student life projects, said 104 trees in the area are in the way of construction. Eighteen of them will be transplanted to new locations and 86 will be cut down. Despite this, Lebo said the school will replace the trees.

“We will plant new trees for the trees that we removed, but whether they go back on the site or another place on campus has been yet to be decided,” he said.

Of the 104 trees, there are seven “exceptional” trees near Mercer Hall, which would require city approval before they are moved or removed. Of the seven, five will be relocated and two will be chopped down. One is not being moved because it is in poor health, and the other would be too challenging to transfer.

“The redwood is grown in such a way, we don’t think it would survive [relocation],” Lebo said. “It’s grown out on only one side.”

Kristine Kenney, a UW landscape architect, said the project team accidentally removed eight exceptional trees before they received a city permit at the Elm Hall site. However, in the city’s original development plan, there was previously an agreement that the trees could be moved, so the UW didn’t face penalties.

Both the UW arborist and a non-university affiliated, consulting arborist assessed the condition of all the trees’ health.

“Our starting point was, how can we do this and maintain as many trees on the site as we can?” Lebo said.

UW sophomore Kyle Murphy is a member of Husky Neighborhood Assistants and received a grant to plant trees near Northeast 45th Street.

“There are cases when [tree removal] makes sense if something important has to go up,” he said. “The trees on campus connects our campus to the Pacific Northwest heritage, the land our campus is founded on.”

Kenney explained that the UW is “trying to just start a tree management plan on the university … [to] create better policies for replacement and relocation.”

The UW hopes to recycle wood from the trees that must be cut down.

“Where we can, we are trying to reuse the material,” Kenney said, “[such as] using wood to create new tables for the residence halls.”

Murphy believes that simply replacing trees is not the same as keeping the existing trees, however he views this option as better than eliminating them.

“It’s not a win-win [situation],” he said. “[But] it’s obviously better than cutting them down.”

Kenney agreed with Murphy’s assessment.

“We know that putting in a new tree isn’t equivalent to removing a tree,” Kenney said. “[But it’s] a process of evaluation and design.”

Reach reporter Daron Anderson at news@dailyuw.com.