Environmental commissioners want to preserve Congress Avenue trees

At its regular meeting this month, members of the city’s Environmental Commission urged planners to prioritize saving as many trees as possible in the reimagining of Congress Avenue.

The questions came after a staff briefing on the Congress Avenue Urban Design Initiative. This is the first time the commission had heard an update on the project since the start of the pandemic. The project team is currently seven months into an 18-month design process.

The initiative is a partnership between the city of Austin and the Downtown Austin Alliance, and serves as the blueprint for the future of the 1.2 miles of Congress Avenue from 11th Street to Riverside Drive. The initiative’s design process is based on a vision plan informed by a community process that concluded in 2019.

Phase one of the plan will complete 30 percent of the design plans, as well as the initial construction phase. During the presentation, Jana McCann, sub-consultant leading the urban design elements of the project, explained that the design team is currently working on the schematic design of the avenue.

With regard to the tree component of the plan, McCann’s design team is working in conjunction with the city arborist, the Watershed Protection Department, Public Works, the Development Services Department and local utilities to provide a preservation and mitigation strategy specific to the avenue. However, the team is recommending that all existing, healthy trees be moved to nearby parkland in order to make room for “desired” species.

Not only are many of the trees “not in great health,” McCann said, but others are not native species. Furthermore, future trees can be planted in alignment with the new street lighting.

“It’s been sort of loosely agreed by the city arborists that we would ultimately replace all the trees in a phased manner,” McCann said.

But commissioners had questions about how the designs will impact the existing trees on the avenue.

Commissioner Pam Thompson said that the existing trees look healthy in the presentation photos and noted that residents are accustomed to seeing oak trees on the avenue. “I’m just not convinced about the oak trees being moved,” she said.

Commissioner Haris Qureshi agreed, and noted that replacing the trees would mean loss of shade for a number of years. “So I would just, you know, urge people to not be willy-nilly about which trees you take out and be really purposeful as far as whether it’s really necessary or not.”

Laura Dierenfield, an Austin Transportation Department division manager, told commissioners she hoped to reassure them that the department and design team understood the various benefits and importance of trees to the community and environment.

“Any effort to replace and offer a much better environment for that tree to thrive would be done very carefully, in phase, and in concert with whatever else was happening on the avenue,” she said. “And also, to the greatest extent possible, replace in kind with the same level of canopy or maturity. So bringing all of those tools to the table to really create a setting that’s beautiful and inclusive, but can also work within the environment that we’re in.”

Rendering from the Congress Avenue Urban Design Initiative Vision Plan.

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Posted In: Environment, District 9