I moved to Montrose in 2008, just in time for Hurricane Ike to welcome me to the Gulf Coast formally, and I lived on Crocker at Avondale during the pandemic. When Hurricane Harvey claimed the Honda Civic I’d been driving, I didn’t have much choice but relying on my own two feet, BCycle and Metro to get around. (And Uber. OK?)
It was all my years of trudging that made me perk up most when I saw the Montrose Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone’s long-term plan to turn Montrose Boulevard into an experience worthy of the name. Hundreds of new trees! Wider, comfortable sidewalks! Safer intersections! Bedroom-sized boxes buried underground to catch the worst of increasingly heavy rains! What’s not to want?
If only it were so simple. The plan — and now the TIRZ itself — has faced opposition of late by people whose online petition and participation at public meetings suggests a concern with the fate of the boulevard’s street trees. I get it — I’m a professional treehugger. Trees for Houston’s Barry Ward told me years ago his organization plants 20,000 trees a year — and that’s all they do. But we should be planting more like 200,000 a year. We need as many trees as we can get.
Which is why I don’t get why there’s opposition to a plan that calls for 137 new live oak and cypress trees to be planted just on the first 0.3-mile stretch of the project between West Clay and Allen Parkway. David Greaney is a Gauge Engineering project manager working with the TIRZ. He told me that nearly 600 new trees will be planted from here to U.S. 59 in all, replacing every one they remove with at least two more. (Much of this is online.) Though 57 older trees, not all live oaks, need to be removed for the first part of the project for one reason or another, a TIRZ presentation stresses, “existing mature trees will be protected and preserved.”
In all-caps, just above that, it practically shouts: “NO HEALTHY, MATURE LIVE OAK TREES IN THE MEDIAN WILL BE REMOVED OR REPLACED.”
What am I missing? What’s so special about these 57 trees — some redbuds, some crape myrtles, some live and post oaks — that, TIRZ president Joe Webb said, were planted less than strategically in the 1990s? What about them justifies a “demand” for “a pause” on a plan that would result in at least 80 more 65-gallon-sized, 14-foot trees than are there now and hundreds of others that will outlive us all?
There’s a video at the top of the op-ed that shows some of what West is talking about, watch it before you read. I’d seen a few stories about the mishegoss over this plan but hadn’t really read about it. With the broader concern about pedestrian and bike-friendly infrastructure projects now, I thought I’d better get up to speed. This project is fully funded and is just awaiting approval from the Mayor. As with West 11th Street, there are some disproportionately loud voices in opposition who seem to be getting all the attention. I lived in Montrose for a decade before moving to the Heights, and Allyn is right about how it really should be much more walkable, but it’s not. And this is a great chance to do something, a very big something, about it. I too don’t know why this is being held up. Let’s please move forward with this.
As far as I have been able to discern, the problem is that every last tree that lines Montrose on either side will be removed, just to make construction easier. They are using various excuses to justify their removal, but that is why they are being removed. Since no sidewalks are being built in the median, they can make a big deal about the big median trees being saved, but that is just a smokescreen. There will be no shade from the new sidewalk trees for years. It is the disingenuous nature of the proposal that gets me. They could have just said they are killing all of the trees on both sides of Montrose in order to save money and bother on construction, and to make a prettier proposal.
@J: The majority of the live oaks along the Montrose Blvd right of way, especially north of Westheimer, were planted by well-meaning but shortsighted people. Sure, it’s natural to be sentimental about trees in general as well as cognizant of their benefits. However, when a species that’s very inappropriate for the site they occupy is used, the benefits are eclipsed by the negatives. Mistakes can and should be rectified, especially when public safety and infrastructure maintenance are primary concerns, not to mention urban aesthetics. Live oaks should never be planted in a narrow strip between sidewalk and curb. When I see street trees under overhead utility lines throughout the City of Houston mutilated by both busses and trucks passing underneath as well as tree crews hired by the utility, I feel frustration and anger at the very lackadaisical approach to street tree design here. If an organized and funded effort materializes to address these situations arises, then I’m supportive. I wish that the City would contemplate exercising some kind of control over what is planted in their right-of-way underneath overhead lines, if anyone from COH is reading this.
I also want to mention that the barrage of bullshit coming from the proponents of this project reminds me of the Memorial Park “prairie” propaganda deluge. What they really did was transform a large part of Memorial Park into an open pit dirt mine, which looks exactly like that today except that it has been somewhat reclaimed. All we heard was a concentrated campaign of bullshit that labelled the forest as “dying” (it isn’t) and a lot of crap about how an open space somehow existed there before. All in aid of justifying the open pit that they wanted to dig in the forest to get dirt for the “land bridges” vanity project. I don’t blame people for falling for the bs, because the PR guys responsible are really good at hiding the plain facts. They have to do this because most people like existing trees, but construction companies and architects hate them.
@J All I can say is if you happen to reside, work, walk, bike, drive and hang out where there were formerly no existing trees, wetlands, prairies or other habitats, then you are blessed and free from responsibility! Awesome.
@voter, my point was that they planned to get rid of all of the sidewalk trees without stating that plainly. I know some of the trees are not great. They needed pushback in order to get the message that a blanket approach to killing all of the streetside trees wasn’t acceptable. I imagine many of the new trees (if actually planted) won’t make it. The contractors love to wrap the trees with support wire and then abandon them to a slow death by strangulation. Me and my little tools saved nine trees from wire on a certain street, but I was not able to save all of them.
@J Now we’re talking: guerilla gardening, removing those damn guywires, fertilizing starving street trees that are totally neglected. I’ve done all of that as well, although generally it seems futile. I do agree with your critique of PR in general, since it is calibrated to forestall, deflect and deny criticism from those who would become actively opposed. I guess my main concern is that COH has a totally hands-off approach to the trees it owns in the ROW unless an offence becomes too blatant to ignore (Wendy’s on Kirby for example). One of the prime examples I know of is on Fondren Rd between Westpark and Westheimer. Businesses along there are pom-pomming the City’s trees right and left with not a peep from COH. I complained to the relevant Council Member fifteen years ago…crickets. The baldcypresses along Richmond Dr from Gessner to Chimney Rock are gradually being whittled away as well. I hope the TIRZ can work with the community to incorporate their concerns. If the project is killed, so be it. But for crying out loud, COH and the TIRZs needs to up their game regarding street trees. At 1419 Montrose Blvd there are baldcypresses growing into the overhead wires and already showing signs of deformation from wire-protection efforts. It’s crazy when most of this could be short-stopped by smarter street tree design. Thanks for the conversation!
Cypress trees send up “knees” which doesn’t make them a good choice
Note, all live oaks are not alike. Some of them are champion pavement-heavers and some are not. Likewise pecans, mostly they have a big taproot and don’t disturb the surrounding street or sidewalk. Most of the street trees in Houston are between the sidewalk and the street, and some are huge, so that alone is not reason to kill them. The problem with the Montrose trees, as I understand it, is that they are where the architect has decided the sidewalk should go.