Quick Take
A 120-foot redwood tree at the corner of Walnut Avenue and Lincoln Street will meet its end after the Santa Cruz City Council voted to chop it down. The decision didn’t come without some sparks, however.
Although the towering tree inspired a rescue attempt by some residents, the Santa Cruz City Council could see no other reasonable fate Tuesday for the 12-story redwood at the corner of Walnut Avenue and Lincoln Street than a chainsaw and ground-down stump.
For government to be the ultimate cause of death for one of nature’s more majestic forms was hard to swallow even for the elected officials who voted the execution through.
“This is not a decision I’d like to make, or particularly enjoy,” Councilmember Scott Newsome, whose downtown District 4 surrounds the tree, said before introducing a motion to chop down the redwood whose roots were damaging public and private property. The city council supported the motion 6-1, with Councilmember Sandy Brown dissenting.
The tree would have been removed much sooner if not for a push from local residents to save it. The city first decided the tree could come down in March 2023, but an appeal by Keelan Franzen, a 26-year-old business owner who lives a few blocks from the redwood, put the issue before the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission. After the commission’s mid-August vote in support of the ax, Franzen appealed once more, to the Santa Cruz City Council. During a Sept. 26 meeting, the council asked for 90 more days of analysis on the redwood before issuing a final decision.
Alas, the tree sat on private property and the city’s analysis showed it was damaging the foundation of an adjacent apartment complex. The owner of the property and complex wanted the redwood removed. Under these realities, the city’s heritage tree law allows little wiggle room for alternatives.
“There is no reasonable option to save the tree and prevent the damage to the building,” city arborist Leslie Keedy told the council Tuesday. Photos shown by Keedy from inside the apartment complex’s crawl space show the tree’s roots infiltrating the building’s footprint; however, these weren’t thick, robust roots taking on the building’s foundation, but wispy feeder roots that, despite their fragility, were winning their struggle against the concrete frame.
Pruning the roots, she said, could cause the tree to decay and become unstable, a dangerous risk in such a dense, residential neighborhood. In approving Newsome’s motion to cut down the tree, the city council directed staff to plant nine trees throughout the city, three times as many as the three required by ordinance.
The tree’s age became a debate that boiled over into Tuesday’s meeting. Franzen’s hired arborist, judging by the size and girth of the redwood (120 feet tall and 28 feet wide), estimated the tree to be 150 to 200 years old. During Tuesday’s meeting, Keedy presented photos of the lot at 339 Walnut Ave. from the late 1950s and early 1960s showing no clear evidence of a tree. Keedy estimated the tree to be about 60 years old; however, without core samples, the tree’s age was subject to guessing.
Yet, when the city council invited public comment on the issue, a woman who gave her name only as Andrea approached the lectern and identified herself as a “tree talker and tree whisperer.” She told the council that, in conversation with the tree, she learned its name is Tom, and that Tom is 254 years old. As her time ran out, Andrea demanded to know whether city councilmembers would join her in visiting Tom to hear directly from him. As is the custom during public comment, councilmembers did not directly entertain the request.
Mayor Fred Keeley asked several times for the speaker to relinquish the microphone and take a seat, but Andrea refused to leave the podium until she received an answer. Keeley, growing visibly and audibly impatient with the tree whisperer, then gaveled the meeting into recess and stormed off the dais; city councilmembers followed. After a quick break, order was restored and discussion continued.
In her dissenting vote, Brown said she felt the city did not take a tree-first approach, instead searching for ways to affirm the ax. Brown pointed to the alternatives offered by local structural engineer David Bolger, who was hired by Franzen to analyze options for saving the tree. However, the city’s arborist said Bolger’s solutions, which included retrofitting the building’s foundation, were unreasonable and too expensive.
“I don’t think the alternatives were seriously considered,” Brown said. “Denying the appeal is the expedient thing. The heritage tree ordinance doesn’t require expediency.”
Brown called the city council’s decision a “checkers move” and said she wished her colleagues had a little more will to play chess and find an alternative.
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