Crews removing at-risk trees from Broad Street landscape

Greg Bailey, The Gadsden Times
·3 min read

Roughly a fourth of the trees along Broad Street will soon be gone, removed by City of Gadsden crews after far exceeding the typical lifespan for parts of an “urban forest.”

The plan is to replace them with some different tree varieties, planted under modern best practices to strike a balance between safety, durability and beauty.

Kay Moore, director of Downtown Gadsden Inc., said the situation was triggered when a tree recently fell at the corner of Broad and Fourth streets.

The stump of a tree that was cut down in the 400 block of Broad Street is pictured. About a fourth of the more than 80 trees on Gadsden's main downtown thoroughfare must be removed because they're at risk; one recently fell spontaneously in this block.
The stump of a tree that was cut down in the 400 block of Broad Street is pictured. About a fourth of the more than 80 trees on Gadsden's main downtown thoroughfare must be removed because they're at risk; one recently fell spontaneously in this block.

“It fell into a parking space,” she said. “No car was parked there and no damage was done. It was spontaneous. We don’t know why it fell, but once we got it cleaned up, we thought, ‘Uh oh, there may be a problem here.' ”

Eric Wright, coordinator for the Etowah County office of the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service, is a member of the DGI board and helped direct the organization to Lee McBride, an International Society of Arboriculture-certified arborist, or expert in cultivating and maintaining trees, based in Huntsville.

“He’s done an excellent job,” Moore said of McBride. “He looked at every tree and told us which ones were at risk, and gave us a game plan for correctly pruning the others.”

There had been 83 trees on Broad Street — Chinese elms, Chinese pistaches and crape myrtles — planted in 1998 during a downtown beautification project. Twenty-three were identified as needing removal, and the process began this week.

Most of the unsafe ones were in the 400 (eight) and 500 (six) blocks.

“Once the city was made aware of the issue, they acted immediately,” Moore said.

“Are we going to miss these trees? Absolutely,” she said. “We’re going to work on a plan to come up with something to replace them. We don’t know what we’re going to do yet, but it’s going to be something great.”

Wright said trees planted in downtown settings like Broad Street are “vibrant parts of the streetscape” and an important asset.

At the same time, he said, they face “a challenging life” that typically only runs seven years or so. They must deal with less-than-ideal conditions such as being planted in concrete and receiving insufficient water. They also tend to grow toward sunlight, which can cause some problematic and non-straight growth patterns.

Wright said there’s also the danger of roots lifting; Moore said that could potentially cause issues with metal plates that have been installed at some trees’ bases to keep them in place, and with electric wiring that’s under the sidewalks for use when needed for downtown events.

The stump of a tree that was cut down in the 400 block of Broad Street is pictured. About a fourth of the more than 80 trees on Gadsden's main downtown thoroughfare must be removed because they're at risk; one recently fell in this block. This stump bears an electrical outlet, which was a specific area of concern for some of the trees.
The stump of a tree that was cut down in the 400 block of Broad Street is pictured. About a fourth of the more than 80 trees on Gadsden's main downtown thoroughfare must be removed because they're at risk; one recently fell in this block. This stump bears an electrical outlet, which was a specific area of concern for some of the trees.

Replacing the departed trees isn’t going to be a quick or immediate process. Moore pointed out that warm weather, which is on the way, isn’t the optimal time to plant trees because of the amount of watering required. Wright predicted it would take five years “to get everything the way we want it.”

He sees this as a chance to “reset” the downtown landscape, with best practices that have been updated in the quarter-century since the current trees were planted.

“This is a great opportunity to look at adding new trees that give us some biodiversity and different colors and looks, and are disease resistant,” he added.

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Tree removal underway in downtown Gadsden