BC to Remove Dead and Diseased Trees on Former Seminary Land Beginning 9/24

At the Boston College Task Force meeting on Tuesday night, 9/18, Jeanne Levesque, Director of Governmental Relations at Boston College, described the problems with diseased and dead trees on the Brighton Campus (the former Seminary land).

Seventeen trees are planned to be removed beginning next week.

Most of the trees are red pine trees along the north side of Commonwealth Avenue which are suffering from Diplodia Canker infections. A few other trees are at various other locations within the property: one along the Tribunal building entrance road, two along the spine road,
one at the guardrail, and one Hemlock suffering from wooly adelgid near the Edison School. There are another 5-7 trees that are being monitored but may eventually have to be removed, too.

A certified arborist inspected the trees on the property, and labelled those trees in need of removal by a pink ribbon. (Blue ribbons on trees interior to the property are not part of the dead tree identification project -- they are from a student project during the summer.)

You can see a few such trees in a photo from a previous post. I have no expertise in the matter, but even to my untrained eye it's clear pretty clear that these red pine trees have to be removed.

Levesque also confirmed that some tree removal had occurred in mid-summer along the border with the Edison School parking lot. She said that many of those trees had been removed at the request of Edison School officials, but all were dying and would have required removal soon in any case.

BC Task Force Meeting: Tuesday 9/18 at 6:30 pm

BC Task Force Meeting

Tuesday, September 18, 2007
6:30-8:30 pm

Brighton Marine Health Center
77 Warren Street, 3rd floor
Brighton MA 02135

Agenda:

1. ISD Briefing- Overcrowding
   
2. Bishop Peterson Hall and Library- Renovations
   
3. Diseased/Dead Trees- Brighton Campus

For more information, contact:
John FitzGerald
Project Manager
Boston Redevelopment Authority
617-918-4267
John.Fitzgerald.bra@cityofboston.gov


Brown and Dying Trees

For more information on the dead and dying trees in the Brighton Campus (former St. John's Seminary property), see my previous post.

Late last week, I was informed that BC people (looking more like outside contractors than internal employees of their Urban Ecology Institute) were tagging some of the trees on the property. Upon visiting, I found the dying pine trees in question along Comm Ave to have pink tags on them; healthier trees were untagged. I also heard that there were other colored tags used elsewhere on the property: what I found were blue tags on apparently healthy trees (at least to my uninformed eyes) in the interior of the property, trees of all different kinds. But there were lots of trees without tags. And there was one metal lamppost with two colored tags, neither blue nor pink; I hope they don't try to saw it down.


Bishop Peterson Hall and Library: Renovations

These are buildings part of the final $65 million sale of property by the St. John's Seminary (controlled by the Archdiocese of Boston) to Boston College. See previous post for information on what buildings these are, and another previous post for BC's intended use for the buildings as of June 2007.

It is unclear the extent to which Boston College can occupy these buildings for institutional purpose prior to approval of some kind of Institutional Master Plan (or IMP amendment), let alone renovate them. In 2006, BC got an IMPA approved which provided for renovations and institutional use of other buildings within the Brighton Campus that had been purchased up until 2006, but that IMPA (in conjunction with the prior IMP) did not cover these new buildings (Bishop Peterson Hall and the Library).

At the task force meeting, BC and the BRA will presumably be explaining what approvals they may or may not need in order to proceed with these renovations and occupation of the buildings for institutional use. It is possible that it will involve an IMPA that they would want to fast-track for approval prior to dealing with the 10-year IMP, or that they will roll the renovations into the IMP itself... or that someone can figure out how they'll avoid the IMPA/IMP route altogether.

Tree Removal Hearing for St. Elizabeth's: Friday, 8/24, at 10 am

From the A-B TAB community notes listing:

Tree removal hearing

The Boston Parks and Recreation Department will be hosting a public hearing to discuss the removal of seven public shade trees at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Brighton on Friday, August 24, at 10 a.m. The hearing will be held in the Conference Room of the Boston Parks and Recreation Department located at 1010 Massachusetts Avenue, 3rd floor, Roxbury.

The hearing will discuss an application for seven tree removals on Cambridge St. due to the interference with the expansion of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. The trees to be removed are thornless honey locusts and have a combined diameter at breast height of 27.5”.

The public hearing will be held by the City of Boston Tree Warden (or designee), who may accept or deny the application. If you have any questions or comments regarding this hearing, please contact the Boston Parks and Recreation Department at (617) 635-4505 or by submitting written comments to: Boston Parks and Recreation Department, Attn: Cambridge St. Tree Hearing, 1010 Massachusetts Avenue 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02118 no later than Friday, August 17, 2007. A decision regarding the tree removals will be made within two weeks of the hearing.

For further information, please contact Greg Mosman of the Boston Parks and Recreation Department at (617) 635-7275.

The Wiltshire Roadblocks Mystery

A number of years ago, the City of Boston decided only to pave Wiltshire Road in Brighton between Portina Road and Chestnut Hill Avenue (the right-hand, or eastern, section in the map above). This decision left the section of Wiltshire Road between Foster Street and Portina Road (the left-hand, or western, section) as an unpaved path. Note that the western end of Wiltshire Road does not appear as a street on GoogleMaps:


This part of Wiltshire Road -- which I'll informally call "Wiltshire Path" -- has limited use for pedestrians, particularly students heading to or from Edison Middle School. There were large barriers on either end, and the path itself could become quite overgrown in the late summer / early fall. In short, no cars could get through -- exactly what the neighbors wanted, because it has the potential of being a major cut-through street, and hence could bring a lot of traffic next to a neighborhood full of (large) families.

At some point last fall, the barriers were removed altogether. What's more, the grass and shrubs along the "Wiltshire Path" were cleared. The occasional car was seen driving through. Neighbors were both angry and concerned that the traffic would make it dangerous for their children. I can attest that there are many children outside playing in Portina Road on a warm spring afternoon, since it is such a quiet, secluded street.

The big question: Who removed the barriers and cleared the brush?

The "Wiltshire Path" stretch of Wiltshire Road is a permanent City of Boston easement (for a public way) on the 188/192 Foster Street parcels previously owned by the Archdiocese of Boston but sold in 2004 to Boston College. The path abuts another large parcel still owned by the Discalced Carmelite Friars, a non-diocesan order. Oddly, there appear to be pieces of asphalt partially exposed under the dirt, grass, and shrubs, as if it had all been pave at one time. Visual inspection of the northeast corner of the 192 Foster Street property showed that substantial tree-work had been done recently in the thick woods bordering the path. The tree-work included large branch removal, and possibly a few trees, likely done by chainsaw.

Since the barrier removal and brush clearing are far beyond what a couple neighborhood kids could do, there are really only two possibilities: City of Boston or Boston College. Whomever did it had some serious equipment, time, and a strong desire to see the path cleared and/or maintained.

The City has claimed that they didn't do it, and are as perplexed as the neighbors. A Boston College official, Jeanne Levesque, was heard on the April 21, 2007 walking tour -- and later confirmed -- that they didn't do it, either, or know who did.

The good news is that, after much persistence by two gentleladies of the neighborhood, employees of Boston Public Works have brought in a new concrete barrier and installed it on the Portina Road end of the path:


Only a small rock was installed on the Foster Street end, which is not a problem since only one barrier is needed to block vehicular traffic:


The lingering question is: Why did they (whoever it was) remove the barriers and clear the brush?

I'll let the conspiracy theorists have a field day on that one.

A Sickening Smack: St. Elizabeth's Medical Center Tree Chopping Project

The day is fast arriving when St. Elizabeth's Medical Center will chop down more than a dozen trees on their property to make way for a (temporary) access road.



There have been orange stakes with red flags the last few weeks scattered throughout both the site of the new emergency room and the new access road.

The access road land has been classified under Article 51 of the zoning code as a Conservation Protection Subdistrict overlay (as well as another overlay of the institutional master plan area); obviously, conservation holds little sway when the institution rammed this road through the Article 80 institutional master plan process.

Such a lovely sight for the moment:

And at that very moment, we heard a loud whack!
From outside in the fields came a sickening smack
of an axe on a tree. Then we heard the tree fall.

BUT...
business is business!
And business must grow
regardless of crummies in tummies, you know.

I hope we can someday bring back the Brown Bar-ba-loots, Swomee Swans, and Humming-Fish.

(The Lorax, Copyright 1971 by Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P.)