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Old Posted Jul 2, 2008, 12:42 PM
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from http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/met...s.3feb6a8.html



New downtown hotel will uproot trees

By Elaine Ayo

The decision to cut down nine of 11 live oaks along Houston and Soledad streets to make way for a multimillion-dollar hotel has some residents and business owners clamoring for better protection of trees downtown.

The site, now a parking lot, will soon house downtown's first Embassy Suites on a corner that could spark future redevelopment along Houston Street and the River Walk.

But those concerned about the trees said the 281-room hotel shouldn't come at the expense of the trees, some of which were planted as part of a redevelopment project funded by VIA Metropolitan Transit, the city and downtown business owners and completed in the early 1990s.

“A lot of the downtown is very beautiful because of the trees we've left in place,” said Buzz Jellett of Alamo Segway, located nearby. “We have an ambience here and I'd hate to see us lose those trees.”

Concern over the project, which has received approval from the city to cut down the trees, reignites a continuing debate over the strength of the city's tree ordinance and how to balance development with preservation.

“(The Embassy Suites) works with other projects in the area,” said Greg Gallaspy, executive director of the Paseo del Rio Association. “It brings the synergy back down to the downtown area.”

A recent legal battle involving the ordinance, passed in 1997 and strengthened in 2003, revolved around developers trying to clear land outside the city limits in its extraterritorial jurisdiction. In April, a judge overturned a decision forcing developers to replace thousands of trees because their vested rights exempted them from the ordinance, but the judge didn't address the issue of whether the ordinance extends to the extraterritorial jurisdiction.

Other debates have centered on whether to protect trees with shorter life spans, such as the hackberry tree, the same way as those, like the live oak, that can live for hundreds of years.

The Embassy Suites developer, Blanco Rio Ltd., has acquired the permits to cut the trees and was assessed $9,150 that would go to the tree mitigation fund that is dedicated to further planting and preservation programs, according to the city review of the trees on the property and the city's tree preservation ordinance.

In addition to preserving two of the 11 live oaks at the site, the developer will plant six new trees: three cedar elms and three chinquapin oaks.

A representative from District 1 Councilwoman Mary Alice Cisneros' office deferred comment on the issue to City Arborist Debbie Reid, who confirmed developers had complied with the city's tree ordinance.

Mayor Phil Hardberger is traveling outside the country and could not be reached for comment. Calls to the city manager's office were not returned.

The live oaks along Houston Street range from 13 to 22.5 inches in diameter at breast height, the measurement the city uses to classify trees. The live oak on Soledad Street has a DBH of 29.5 inches, qualifying as a heritage tree in the city's ordinance.

Preservation and mitigation fee requirements for heritage long live trees, or tree species capable of living multiple centuries, are three times that of long live trees with a DBH between 6 and 24 inches, Reid said.

The ordinance requires property owners to pay mitigation fees or plant additional trees for reducing the inches of DBH below 40 percent of what was originally there.

Many of the live oaks on Houston Street were planted as part of the TriParty project, a $42 million effort to beautify the area with new pavers, maps and greenery in many parts of downtown.

Concerned Monte Vista resident Emily Thuff said that perhaps the tree ordinance should have included a notification clause to let residents know which trees were under threat of being torn down.

“I just cannot imagine that that is the only place they can make an entry into the property or whatever they are going to do,” said Thuff, who used to work downtown and is concerned about tree preservation there. “The kind of interesting part is that if you're down in that part of town, the shade that those trees cast is half of Houston Street.”

Houston Street is one of downtown resident Joanna Foster's favorite streets, she said, because of the old buildings and the trees lining the street.

“In this very, very hot weather, seeing green and seeing shade is an absolute necessity,” Foster said. “The more trees we have the better.”

Plans to place an Embassy Suites at the site surfaced in 2006, several years after an exclusivity deal derailed another Embassy Suites project because it would pit two Hilton brands against one another.

The 16-story incarnation of the popular hotel brand is set to also have 12,000 square feet of meeting space and a restaurant. It is tentatively set to open in September 2009.

For Gallaspy, controlled growth downtown includes striking a balance between development and preservation.

“The bottom line for me, as long as it is controlled growth, is do you want to be a little city or do you want to be a big city?” he said.
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