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Date: 6/21/2021
NORTHAMPTON – After the city announced in April that it would be paving Warfield Place, residents of the neighborhood created a petition on June 13 to place a moratorium on the project until a different plan is created to protect the cherry trees along the street.
Oliver Kellhammer, a resident of Warfield Place and a lecturer on Sustainable Systems at the Parsons School of Design in New York, said residents of the neighborhood love the trees.
“People love these trees, and they love them more than we even knew. We love them because we live on the street but apparently people from all over this part of Northampton come by here when they are in bloom just to look at them, so it has become a local attraction,” he said.
By removing the trees, Kellhammer said the city is going against its Sustainable Northampton Plan.
“The city has signed on to this Sustainable Northampton Plan which everybody loves, it is a great plan. But cutting these trees down goes against the plan, the plan calls for more trees not less. The other issue is every time you cut down a mature tree you can raise the local temperature 5 degrees Fahrenheit or more,” he said.
Kellhammer said he and his neighbors are not against paving the street but they feel they were left out of the planning process.
“We are not against paving; we are happy to have improvement. The big thing that got people upset was the lack of process. We did not have a say in how or when this was going to happen and we were really shut out of the process, there was no collaboration,” he said.
With a two-year moratorium, Kellhammer said the city and residents could come up with a more climate friendly solution to paving the street.
“This street could be a really green street, we could do a redevelopment, it is just going to take longer to do it right, we want to work with them. We just think it has been too much of a rush and we would like a moratorium to take a step back, take a deep breath, and figure out what we can do,” he said.
While Kellhammer said Tree Warden Richard Parasiliti said some of the trees are diseased, the neighborhood wants the trees to live out the rest of their lives.
“These trees are 30 years old, and the tree warden says some of them have some disease, but they can live a lot longer. We would like the trees to be pruned if they need some work. We think they should live out their natural lives and replace them bit by bit,” he said.
Rather than tearing all the trees down at once, Kellhammer said residents would replace them as they die to keep the neighborhood’s landscape the same.
“We are all for preventative maintenance and if there are dead limbs prune them, but let’s keep them alive as long as possible and if one dies then we will deal with that when the time comes. If one dies, we can replace them and do it incrementally,” he said.
After a June 1 meeting with Mayor David Narkewicz and Department of Public Works (DPW) Director Donna LaScaleia, Kellhammer said residents were more upset with the paving project.
“The mayor eventually came to talk to us along with Donna LaScaleia, the DPW head, and the mayor basically said he was going to listen but was not going to change the plan, so people got very angry about that,” he said.
At the time of writing 657 people had signed the change.org petition.
The Northampton DPW did not respond to a request for comment as of press time.