The Image Sarasota Tree-lovers Never Saw

UPDATE: 

Following the testimony of fourteen citizens in support of the trees, 

The City Commission voted unanimously to go back

and try to address flooding issues while saving the palm trees. 

The Motion (Chapman) : "I move to delay the project to determine the feasibility of resolving the flooding issues while saving some or all of the existing palm trees." Second (Snyder)

Watch a summary here starting at 3:52

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The City of Sarasota maintains that it held over twenty public meetings at which the public could have objected to removing 26 cabbage palm trees from one block of Palm Avenue. That's probably true. It is also true that not one individual in all those advertised meetings mentioned anything about saving any of the palms.

That is going to change Monday night, August 18th at the City Commission meeting. 

Please be there and bring a friend. (If you can't make it, send an email - addresses below)

The City would like to believe no one showed up to speak for the trees because everyone either liked, or at least accepted, their plans to kill the palms (they were not going to relocate them). I believe no local tree lovers or history fans showed up because no one ever saw the image below:

X marks the spot.  Every x a native cabbage palm targeted for death.

Once citizens learned the implications of the city's proposed landscaping changes, pressure developed and built until City staff finally announced they would suspend work on the project pending direction from the City Commission. That will occur at the meeting that starts at 6:00 pm in City Hall on Monday August 18th. This is our last best chance to save the historic trees. 

But that suspension did not stop them from working to move their original project forward. The Downtown Improvement District Board (the entity that initiated the project) recently voted (after a half hour PowerPoint presentation from City Staff and the Landscape Architect) to recommend to the City Commission that the City move forward with the project as originally designed. They also have a signed document from merchants that want the project to go forward as designed. Their big concession- instead of killing the palms - move them somewhere else. Along the way I received something between an interrogation and a civics lesson. Click here to review that strange exchange.

FAST FACTS:

• Some of the palms have been in that location for 90 years, a fact the City neglected to research.

• This is Palm Avenue, repeat, Palm Avenue.

• The palms create dense shade, are very low maintenance, are native, and are OUR STATE TREE.

• This is most pedestrian friendly section of Palm Avenue. Pedestrians can use the sidewalk, or walk on turf from the sidewalk to the curb.

• An independent review by an arborist has found them to be healthy.

• Three separate City policies specify that there should only be one species of tree there (that is the case now, they are proposing two or three).

• Another City policy directs that "All reasonable efforts should be made to maintain and protect existing trees in the public space or right of way." Downtown Greenspace Policy V.3

• The City never held a public meeting it was scheduled to hold. Instead they talked privately with merchants, and property owners.

• The Downtown Improvement District actually has the following goals: "Be the place to go to avoid 'anywhere and everywhere' of the American suburbia." and "The place must be unlike those of competitors, recognizably different."

We need a good turnout.  Being right is not enough -- we need to demonstrate that lots of people object to the destruction of our natural and cultural heritage just to "mirror" the landscape in front of a parking garage. Please be there and bring a friend. (If you can't make it, send an email.)

Read my August 15 Guest Column in the Sarasota Herald Tribune here.

Read Diana Hamilton's SRQ daily August 16th column here.

City staff will be presenting several options:

1)Keep the project as designed and transplant the existing eligible palm trees off-site. There is no implied warranty on the transplanted palms. This will increase project costs by approximately $7,000.

2)Keep the proposed sidewalk as designed

a)Temporarily remove existing eligible palm trees during construction and transplant back to the site. Survival rates will depend on health of the trees and no implied warranty will be provided. This will increase project costs by approximately $8,000.

b)Plant new palm trees instead of proposed canopy trees in the approved design. New palm trees will include a warranty. There is no projected cost increase.

c)Plant new palm trees instead of proposed canopy trees and transplant existing eligible palm trees off-site. New palm trees will include a warranty. Transplanted palms would have no implied warranty. This will increase project costs by approximately $7,000.

3)Delay the project to determine feasibility of resolving flooding issues while saving some or all of the existing palm trees. This will add approximately $9,000 cost to the project for up-front engineering costs, if determined feasible, additional construction costs may be required. This option will delay the project by a minimum of 3 months. 

I have been corresponding with City staff about variations of their 2a option - ways to keep all the trees by moving them offsite and then back again. I have arguing to replant the historic trees in their original locations. It is too soon to tell if some common ground can be reached. But you should feel free to argue on behalf of Option 3. -- going back and respecting the trees from the start. That's what they should do, but it would cost more and require them to concede they erred, so they keep looking for ways to salvage their existing design.

Here are the email addresses for the Commissioners.

Willie.Shaw@sarasotagov.com

Susan.Chapman@sarasotagov.com

Suzanne.Atwell@sarasotagov.com

Paul.Caragiulo@sarasotagov.com

Shannnon.Snyder@sarasotagov.com

Chair of DID asks: Does Jono Miller have standing to challenge this project??

At the DID (Downtown Improvement District) meeting this morning  (August 5) Steve Stancel and Phil Smith (the landscape architect) spent a half hour presenting a PowerPoint leading to the DID voting to recommend to the City Commission to move forward with the project as planned. Their only concession: relocate the palms to some other location. 

Along the way, Chairman Ernie Ritz allowed me to speak and used the opportunity to ask me a series of questions (and he managed to include a civics lesson along the way). The basic drift seemed to be that I had no right to be challenging a project of the DID. Here's a transcript I would label 95% accurate. The video of the meeting will be posted online. 

RITZ: But Mr. Miller, I’ve got to ask you some (unintelligible).

MILLER: Yes.

RITZ: Do you own any property, commercial property, in the DID?

MILLER: Not a square foot.

RITZ: Are you then, therefore you are not a taxpayer in the downtown improvement district?

MILLER: I am not. I’m a, I’m a customer of two businesses . . . well, one business that is no longer there and a current business in that block.

RITZ: Did you attend any of SEMCOM 2010?

MILLER: No, I sure didn’t.

RITZ: Have you attended any of the workshops in the past three years?

MILLER: No, because there was no announcement of what was involved.

RITZ: Do you live downtown?

MILLER: I do not. Although I have. I’ve lived on Main Street and I’ve lived on Third Street. And I watched the trees that were planted for the veter . . . the people that died in the First World War, I watched those oaks be removed because, as, um, Mr. Smith stated, when you plant oak trees, they are too big to be an urban tree.

RITZ: Well, Mr. Miller this is a project that was voted on the majority of the taxpayers in the downtown improvement District.[i] This is what they want. And, I back up our taxpayers that we represent. I would say my, my observation is to go forward with the plan that we have all drawn up for the last three years and we have had so much input, it is unbelievable.[ii]  It’s just that you’re comin’ in at the very end, and you, you are certainly in the minority. And I wonder, I wonder if you even have standing? How can you, where do you live anyway?

MILLER: I live between the Ringling Museum and the Jungle Gardens in the City of Sarasota.

RITZ: (Unintelligble)

MILLER: I certainly am.  And I’m a downtown . . .

RITZ:  (INTERRUPTING) I know. And that’s like me goin’ up to the North Trail and telling those people I don’t like what you’re doing. Well, too bad.

MILLER: Well, I think you should if you don’t like what they’re doing. You know, I’m a downtown person*, I shop downtown, I probably eat downtown once a week, my insurance agent is in that block, um, I started shopping in that block in 1975 at Donnellys, and, um, here’s what I would say:

I think it is totally appropriate to consider the taxpayers and the people that are contributing to the DID, but I think you also need to consider the other citizens, the people that are actually the customers, and there’s gonna . . , I can tell you, we may be in a minority, but there are a lot of people that are very upset about the potential of these trees being removed -- particularly in light of their historic relevance – they may be, in fact, the oldest, um, deliberately planted landscape trees in the City of Sarasota.[iii]

RITZ: That’s one of the things about the United States of America, and that is that the majority rules- that’s the way we select Presidents[iv] and Senators and that’s the way we make decisions. And the majority rules here. I have in front of me, a signed document from all the people who own property down there. And they want this project to go forward as drawn.

MILLER: That’s fantastic.[v]

RITZ:  So that’s where I would stand. I would say we should go forward and do the will of the people who we represent.

MILLER: Okay, well, I got a little confused at my first meeting, because um, it seemed  like you were a Downtown Improvement District, which I took to mean you were trying to improve downtown, but I heard Mr. Moran say you are a downtown business district. If you are trying to improve the downtown in general I think you need to take into consideration the views of the people that shop downtown and not just the merchants and property owners. And those people’s views have not been incorporated to date. You can have twenty meetings, but if no body shows up to participate, then . . .

RITZ: (interrupting) Those meetings were advertised in the newspaper.

MILLER: Were they advertised, were the implications of removing 26 native trees advertised in the newspaper? Or did it just say meeting of the Downtown Improvement District?

RITZ: Mr. Miller you have to understand that you are a very, very small minority. And the majority of the people have spoken and they want us to go forward and build what they perceive is the best for their business (emphasis added).[vi] We didn’t call ourselves a business improvement district, because we are not just about the businesses, we’re a Downtown Improvement District.

MILLER; (interrupting) Okay, well you need to change your website,[vii] because there are several references to Business Improvement District on your website.

RITZ: Okay

MILLER: I’m sorry I’ve taken too much of your time, but I did want you to understand the historic significance of these trees and the fact that contrary to the assertions that the public knew what was going on, the public was never informed about this.

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[i] I’ve asked for clarification about this since it seems unlikely that the taxpayers in the Downtown Improvement District actually voted on this specific project.

[ii] I haven’t found any evidence of any input. I think it is entirely possible that no citizen ever showed up at any of these meetings to express concern about removing the palms. To me that is prima facie evidence that the City failed to advertise the fact that these trees were slated to be removed.

* And when I say I am a downtown person, I mean: I have lived on both Main Street and Third Street
• I shop at the Farmer's Market, Whole Foods and 10th Street Publix every weekend I am in town
• I'm a Burns Court Cinema member and also watch movies at Hollywood 20.
• We've had a P. O. Box downtown continuously since 1975.
• We eat in a downtown restaurant at least once a week

[iii] We have a photograph of some of these palms in place in 1925 and since they have full canopies that means they were there at least a year, making 90 years in that location. The city is not convinced they are the same trees.

[iv] Just worth noting that is NOT how we elect Presidents.

[v] This was meant as a neutral acknowledgement of his statement, presented without sarcasm.

[vi] Note that the people he is referring to are the business people.

This certainly seems to suggest it is a Business Improvement District

[vii] See screenshots of the DID webpage

Check the center button on the bottom row.

City To Propose False Dilemma for North Palm Ave Landscape

AUGUST 5TH UPDATE--  THE CITY MAY HAVE ADDED A LEAVE-THE-TREES, BACK-TO SQUARE-ONE OPTION. I HAVE REQUESTED A COPY OF THEIR AMENDED OPTIONS. 

The City of Sarasota, which we understood had suspended work on the North Palm Avenue Landscaping Project and was going to seek advice from the City Commission on August 18th has apparently been hard at work re-jiggering and re-framing the project and will be presenting the Board with a false dilemma. (See City document below)

A false dilemma is "is a type of informal fallacy that involves a situation in which limited alternatives are considered, when in fact there is at least one additional option." Wikipedia.

My favorite false dilemma as a child occurred when my mother asked if I would rather take a nap or a bath. In this case the City is providing three options, two of which are extremes (think hot porridge and cold porridge) and the middle option is supposed to be "just right".

Unfortunately, that middle option reflects a complete misunderstanding of the trees they seem so hell-bent on removing. 

One option (#3) is the do nothing option and that is clearly unacceptable due to the sidewalk flooding that the City has ignored for years.

Another (Option #1) involves going ahead as planned with the project, even though it is contrary to numerous adopted City policies and ignores the historic status of some of the palms, which have been there AT LEAST 89 years. I would argue this is unacceptable. 

The middle bowl of porridge in the City's view (OPTION #2) comes in several flavors, BUT THEY ALL INVOLVE REMOVING ALL THE PALM TREES!

The  "b" and "c" versions involves REMOVING ALL THE PALM TREES, planting them somewhere else and then implementing much of the original design except that the Hollies and Tabebuias  (and the Thrinax?) would be replaced with brand new (presumably cabbage) palms. "c" includes a warranty on the new palms, "b" doesn't. Neither plan insures the existing historic palms would live in their new location. 

So what about "a"? "a" involves REMOVING ALL THE PALM TREES and then bringing them back again (also with no guarantees).  The City claims this is necessary due to some unspecified underground utility issues. This is crazy -- the palms do not need to be removed to add sidewalk, adjust the drainage, or whatever. These are not oaks or pines -- they are used to having most of their roots removed and surviving. 

WHAT THE CITY SHOULD BE DOING

The City should be clearly defining what problems they are trying to solve there (and identify the criteria for success) and there should be a commitment to 1) being compliant with existing City policy, and 2) starting from a premise of saving as many existing trees as possible on site. 

INSTEAD

Instead the City has homed in on the intolerable sidewalk flooding and is planning to present the City Commission with a false dilemma. Let me be perfectly clear: All the sidewalk flooding could be addressed and eliminated without removing any of the existing palm trees. 

IF

If the City is not going to do it right (defining the problem and criteria for success at the front end) and instead jump to the solution for what they now seem to see as a flooding problem, let me suggest what that solution would look like.

1) The elevations of the Bay Plaza driveway where they meet the sidewalk are changed so that stormwater does not make a left turn and head down the sidewalk. 

2) The turf/sod between the sidewalk and curb are regraded so that the turf (or hardscape) is lower than the existing sidewalk -- that will enable any water on the sidewalk to drain street-ward. The cabbage palms do not care if six or eight inches are lowered in their vicinity. (Y'all have seen cabbage palms with virtually all their roots shorn off, traveling on flatbed trucks to a landscaping job. Removing a quarter of the roots would be minor in comparison.)

The City's current pitch appears below. Clicking on the pages should enlarge them.

The DID implemented the plan to "mirror the other side of the street".
How many of you think of flowers when hollies are mentioned?

Yeah, they are very obsessed with consistency. And nothing would make Palm Ave more boring than consistency. 

As far as I have been able to determine so far, none of the voting entities mentioned above were told by staff that
1)the design was not compliant with numerous officially adopted City policies, or
2) implementing the design would result in the elimination of 26 native trees from Palm Avenue. 

Herald-Tribune Covers Palm Ave Story

Tucked under the headline PALM AVENUE PALMS' FUTURE IS AGAIN SHAKY, the Sarasota Herald Tribune's Ian Cummings ran a story on July 20th 2014. Although the piece mis-identified me as a "retired professor of Environmental Studies" the article, which appeared on the front page of the second section, is a fair summary of the issue.

I was not interviewed for the article, so it doesn't reflect the more recent discovery that some of the palms were visible in a 1925 photo - making them at least 89 years old in that location.

The article, somewhat ominously, quotes Tim Litchet that "Now, we are hearing from people on both sides"  suggesting a campaign by parties unknown to reduce shade, decrease pedestrian opportunity, violate adopted City policy, and disrespect our natural and cultural heritage on Palm Avenue.

New Discovery Pushes Back Age of Palm Ave Cabbage Palms

When I started this quest to save as many of the Palm Ave. cabbage palms as possible, I was being told they had been "dumped" there in 1983, making them 31 years old (in that spot). The pejorative verb and Reagan-era origin suggested these trees were expendable.

Then I did some investigating at the County History Center (and left them a tip -- its a great resource). That pushed the date back to 1957, nearly doubling their age at that location to 57 years. 

1957 photo shows palms lining North Palm Avenue.

Now an anonymous researcher has produced a photo from 1925 that shows a row of cabbage palms lining that section of Palm Avenue. That means some of the palms have been there 89 years, nearly three times the age that the Downtown Improvement District thought was relevant and clearly making a case that these palms have some historic significance. 

These aren't simply palms seen by Jerry Springer, Stephen King, and Dick Smothers, these are palms Mrs. Potter Palmer drove by, palms seen by Jimmy Stewart, Emmett Kelly, and Mackinlay Kantor. Palms that survived the great depression. Palms that were there when servicemen trained in Sarasota and when the war ended on August 14, 1945. The City failed to undertake any meaningful due diligence to determine the history of the landscape they have been proposing to replace.

Since they are healthy and established in the photo, one has to wonder how much further back they go. 

Panoramic view of Palm Ave from 1925 shows rows of cabbage palms lining the street.

Magenta arrows show the row of palms. 
Green arrow points to the Women's Club
(now Florida Studio Theatre) 
on the corner of Palm and Cocoanut.

City Staff Recommends Re-thinking Palm Tree Removal

Friday July 11

Tim Litchet, Director of Neighborhood and Development Services for the City of Sarasota, announced today that the City is putting the plans to remove 26 palm trees from the 1262-1274 block of North Palm Avenue on hold pending direction from the City Commission. The full text of the announcement appears below. 

While no explanation was provided for the time out, it was becoming apparent that earlier efforts to solicit input from city residents regarding the tree removal and new landscaping failed to attract the attention of many who would prefer to see the palms remain. In addition, new information regarding the historic status of some of the trees was overlooked earlier in the decision process.

"Mr. Miller, this email comes to verify our conversation this morning where I informed you that I had met with Marlon Brown, and he has directed that staff bring the Palm Avenue palm tree issue to the City Commission on August 18th to review the status of the project and to get any further direction from the City Commission that they may wish for staff to consider.  Staff will prepare an agenda item that will suggest options including building the project as approved, not building the project,  redesigning  the project to save as many of the palm trees as possible while doing our best to improve drainage, and/or delaying the project until we have newly adopted code standards to work with related to the efforts of the Urban Design Studio.  I will provide you a copy of that agenda item in advance of the meeting."

As noted in the announcement above, today's decision does not mean that the trees will be saved, only that the impending plans to remove them will be considered by the City Commission and that the trees are not immediately threatened. 

Fascinating Facts about the Palm Ave 26

Truth is Stranger (and more interesting) than Fiction

When I first went to my first Downtown Improvement District meeting on June 25th, I was told what seemed to be the official DID narrative about the palms in front of the 1262-1274 block of Palm Avenue. The palms, I was informed, were all "dumped" there in 1983 when Bay Plaza was built. Mr. Kauffman, a DID board member is certainly entitled to his opinion of the cabbage palms (and he has made it quite clear he hates them), but, to quote Senator Moynihan, he is not entitled to his own facts.

His denigrating verb choice (dumped) suggests they were pushed off a truck and somehow grew into more or less vertical trees. That didn't happen. Someone went to the trouble and care to plant the Bay Plaza relocation trees there. He would have you believe there were no palms there previously and the palms at risk today have only been there a modest 31 years.

Cultural History is interesting, Natural History is interesting, but the intersection of the two is Fascinating!

I have been doing business in those storefronts continuously since 1975, and I didn't seem to recall a time when there were no palms there. The building was built in 1954, and it seemed unlikely there was just lawn between the storefronts to the curb from 1954 until 1983. So I drove out to the Sarasota History Center and looked at their beautiful 1957 aerial photograph of downtown. That picture was taken on March 10, 1957 and, lo and behold, it clearly shows a row of palm trees in front of that block. Because the canopies are full in the photo, and because it takes transplanted palms a while to recover and grow a new dense canopy, I think the odds are excellent they were planted in 1954, when the building was built. 

Do I know for sure they are cabbage palms? Nope, can't prove it, but consider the state of the local nursery industry in 1954. True, there was Reasoner's, but the wide variety palms available today was not just there. The canopies are consistent with cabbage palms, and they are clearly not Royal or Cocoanut palms. So, having looked at aerial images of thousands of cabbage palms, I was pretty sure that in 1957 a row of probably 11(maybe 12) cabbage palms graced that block. 

This black and white photo from 1957 clearly shows a row of palms
(with a gap ) in front of the 1262-1274 block of Palm Avenue.
This is a view from the North, looking South.

What became of the palms that celebrated their semicentennial in 2007?

Seeing the 11 or 12 palms in the photo begged the question: what happened to them? I tried looking at the landscape architect's map to see if any lined up, but that seemed inconclusive. Then, this evening, July 9th, Julie and I went to look.

Mind-Blowing

We arrived in the evening, after eating dinner on Lower Main in one of our favorite restaurants: Two Senior Eaters (Thezla is an attentive server). The first palm, the furthest east and closest to the building was hard to interpret, but then things became clear. Seven of the 57-year old palms are still there! And, of course, it is quite likely that they have been there 60 years. How do we know? Because they look completely different than the more recent Bay Plaza rescues. 

Four Distinct Differences

First of all, they are planted in a more or less straight line. Second, they are the palms closest to the storefronts. Third, they are a completely different diameter than the more recent palms (much smaller), and fourth, most show a swelling where the trunk suddenly gets wider. 

That's where natural history and cultural history collide. The skinnier 57 year-old trees came from a locale with relatively poor growing conditions. When they got transplanted to Palm Avenue, the conditions were more to their liking, and the trunks got beefier. Go see for yourself. The Bay Plaza palms were coming from a block away, almost undoubtedly the same soil -- and their trunk diameter consequently doesn't show that variation.

A living natural/cultural history lesson. 

So right there, on little 'ol Palm Ave., are 26 palm trees attempting to teach us about our city's history. And some of them have been there for probably 60 years (unarguably 57).  Go check them out - you'll enjoy telling your friends or children about how the two batches of trees tell some of the story of Sarasota.

Better Hurry.

But you had best hurry, because the City of Sarasota is planning to remove every single one of them in just a month or two. Every 31-year old tree, and every 60-year old tree, and they will be replaced with two hollies, two Tabebuias, and eight Thrinax palms. And when they are gone, you'll be able to tell your friends and children how Palm Avenue used to have Palm stories. 

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If you are wondering why all these trees will be removed, the answer is simple. So that side of the street will match the side of the street next to the parking garage.

So that side of the street will match the side of the street next to the parking garage.

http://jono08.blogspot.com/2014/06/saving-palms-of-palm-avenue.html

http://jono08.blogspot.com/2014/07/sarasotas-plan-for-palm-ave-far-worse.html