Tree ordinance could be revisited

Melanie Bass Pollard struggled to swallow tears as she stood on Norwood Avenue in Kirkwood earlier this month and listened to a chainsaw sever old trees nearby. On the other side of a fence, workers were clearing a long-empty plot where a mini-subdivision will rise.

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Eventually, new trees will grow up in the yards of the 11 new houses of the Oak Park development. And people will pay probably hundreds of thousands of dollars to live there. But what’s gone was more than 100 years in the making and ought to be more highly valued, say people such as Pollard.

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“The loss at Norwood is a permanent loss. That quality of tree can’t come back,” says Pollard, the director of Atlanta Protects Trees, an advocacy group that wants local governments to set rules that spare valuable greenery. The builder, Thrive Homes, did not return calls requesting comment.

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Builders are responding to the growing demand for intown Atlanta living — and in some neighborhoods, larger living spaces — by clearing out wooded parcels that have been ignored or by chopping down trees. And environmentalists are turning up pressure on City Hall to protect the city’s trees — possibly by revisiting Atlanta’s controversial ordinance that dictates what property owners must do to chop down trees on their land.

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Right now, the city charges for permission to cut down a healthy tree on private property. Chopping down a tree 12 inches in diameter, for example, costs $460. That fee increases with the size of the tree. Larger projects including subdivisions, vacant lots, or commercial property can pay a flat fee between $5,000 and $10,000 per acre.

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Kathy Evans, an analyst in the city’s arborist division, can see the upturn in Atlanta’s real estate market reflected in requests to take down trees.

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“We are seeing a great increase in the number of building permits submitted, and when you see more building permits, you see more trees have to be taken down,” she says.

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During the recession, Evans says, a greater share of building permits were for repairs and additions versus new housing. But since then, she’s noticed an uptick in new residential construction, including multi-family and mixed-use developments. Larger footprints also mean more trees to chop down.

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Greg Levine, co-executive director of Trees Atlanta says it will be a while before some recent survey data will be ready to read, but his group’s intuition is that the tree canopy, one of Atlanta’s identifying characteristics, is shrinking as the real estate market picks up. If nothing else, he says, Trees Atlanta is getting more calls from people angry about tree removals.

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“We need to start thinking about how we do things differently,” Levine says. “It’s good that people are fighting for individual greenspaces, but we really need to look at the city as a whole.”

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Kevin Curry, a retired vice president at Selig Enterprises, used to represent the commercial development industry on the Atlanta Tree Conservation Commission, a city body that works to protect and regenerate the city’s tree canopy. The commission also hears appeals of city decisions related to trees.

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Curry says a big question for Atlanta is how it decides to resolve, on a citywide level, the demands of density versus tree canopy.

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Building a development or moving into a building in denser areas such as central Buckhead, Midtown, or Downtown comes with green bona fides, such as less pavement per resident. But those built-up areas are where the tree canopy is thinnest. There is more tree cover in the more sprawled-out, single-family residential neighborhoods.

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“Are we after putting canopy there in hubs at any cost, or do we say there are going to be hubs where we will lose canopy and make it up elsewhere, or put preserves, conservation areas ... and keep some greenspaces in those commercial hubs?” Curry says.

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Tim Keane, Atlanta’s planning commissioner, says the city has studied the tree ordinance. He thinks that it is time for a revisit, for several reasons, including preservation.

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In August, his office handed a $11,400.13 fine — the maximum amount allowed by law, to Keane’s chagrin — to a developer who cut down five historic trees in Ormewood Park. But the commissioner says his office has also handled calls from homeowners who have had to jump through hoops to chop down hazardous trees on their property.

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“I’ve had instances on both ends of the spectrum where we need to be stronger and where we need to give people a break,” Keane says. “The tree ordinance needs tweaking big time to address the spectrum of issues that we deal with related to trees.”

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Miranda Hawkins contributed reporting.