P&Z Watch: Trees to Be Felled at 100 East Putnam are Focus of Discussion

“When we’re talking about the ecological value of these trees, a native planting plan is vastly superior to a non native or invasive plan. There’s the question of the canopy for aesthetics and different reasons, but there’s also the ecological value in replacing that with something that in the long term will have ecological benefit, and will have the advantage of better growing conditions.”

Carolyn Matthews, ecologist and arborist with William Kenny Associates

Haslun said that even a tree that had fallen over and is rotting on the ground has some value.

“We were trying to get clarification from (Tree Warden, Dr. Greg Kramer), but he didn’t feel that was necessary to do,” Haslun said.

Jeff Scherr, a landscape architect with Granoff Architects, described the trees growing out of the ledge along northern and western property line as an existing invasive understory.

He said the proposal was to plant non invasive columnar and pollinator plants.

There was some discussion of the look of the building’s brick facade having variety without looking too “Disney.”

He noted that in the previous day’s briefing, he was surprised by commissioner Nick Macri’s comment about delineating different buildings without making them look like ‘Disney.’

Mr. Haslun said he thought that discussion on architecture was complete, having made changes to accommodate the Architectural Review Committee’s comments.

Ms Alban said just a few items were incomplete. The applicant needs DPW final approval of the traffic plan, and had to address outstanding comments from the town’s traffic consultant, BETA.

The applicant, Andrew Toth, said he was disappointed not to have Sewer Department sign off, given that it had been 15 months since the application was first submitted.

“Please, please light a fire in that department so we can get this into the end zone,” Toth said.

Ms Alban said there was a staffing shortage in the Sewer Dept.

The application was left open, and is on the Wednesday, Jan 20 P&Z agenda (5:00pm).