Whoops.
A subcontractor working on the Fraser Street realignment project mistakenly cut down seven trees on the 100 block of West Beaver Avenue, State College public-works Director Mark Whitfield confirmed Monday.
It happened Friday morning, when the subcontractor misread plans provided by the state Department of Transportation, Whitfield said.
The fallen trees — five lindens, one flowering pear and one hardy rubber, borough arborist Alan Sam said — were owned by the borough. They stood between the sidewalk and the street on the north side of the roadway, between Saint’s Cafe and Fraser Street.
‘By the time I found out about (the mistake),’ Whitfield said Monday morning, ‘all the trees were down. …
‘There’s not enough Elmer’s glue to put them back together,’ he said.
The name of the responsible subcontractor was not immediately available Monday, and the primary contractor on the street-realignment project — Pittsburgh-based Baiano Construction Co. — did not respond immediately to a phone message.
Whitfield said the responsible party will be required to pay to replace the trees.
‘Honestly, the contractor is just sick about it,’ Whitfield said. ‘(The company) did a lot of work it didn’t have to do. Now he has to pay to replace the trees.’
The subcontractor was to make preliminary landscaping preparations Friday for the Fraser Street realignment project at Beaver Avenue, a PennDOT-controlled endeavor that began in earnest Monday. At least four trees along the 100 block of South Fraser Street were removed — as planned — as part of the landscaping prep.
The north-side sidewalk along the 100 block of West Beaver Avenue is to be widened as part of the overall project, but all the trees there were supposed to stay, at least for now, borough officials said.
Sam said the oldest ones there — the little-leaf lindens — were probably about 30 years old. The biggest ones removed appeared to have been more than a foot in diameter.
But State College officials said they see a silver lining in the mistake. Eventually, Whitfield said, the borough was looking to replace the little-leaf lindens with a cleaner type of tree — something that grows faster, gives better shade and doesn’t attract the aphids that make the sidewalk there dark and sticky.
‘They weren’t the best trees to begin with,’ Whitfield said. ‘We had plans to systematically remove and replace them. We just moved the plan up a little.’
Sam said the little-leaf lindens had tended to drop their leaves by August, thanks to their sensitivity to heat and drought. The borough stopped planting lindens in the downtown about 10 to 15 years ago, he said.
The borough Tree Commission will discuss what types of trees to plant anew along West Beaver Avenue. Hybrid maples, honey locusts and rubber trees will probably be among those considered, Sam said.
‘They’re going to be smaller’ initially, he said. But on the bright said, Sam went on, the borough can adjust the new-tree locations to help foster pedestrian flow and to benefit the businesses on the block.
Meanwhile, work on the nearly $1 million project to realign Fraser Street at Beaver Avenue is expected to continue through September, Whitfield said. Eastbound traffic on Beaver was reduced to one lane in that area Monday morning; Whitfield said Baiano is aiming to complete the Beaver Avenue portion of the project by mid-August.
‘He is going to keep Fraser Street open for as long as he can,’ Whitfield said, though the Fraser Street parking garage will be closed for a couple days — at some point — so that workers can overhaul its entrance area.
Parallel parking on the 100 block of South Fraser will be suspended temporarily during the construction period. But the borough will add some extra spots at the former municipal building site, along the 200 block of West Calder Way, to help make up the difference, Whitfield said.
Likewise, the borough’s surface parking lot along the 100 block of South Fraser is slated to remain open for public use, at least until construction for the expected Fraser Centre redevelopment project begins. The street realignment project will eliminate the surface lot’s Fraser Street entrance, though, directing drivers to use the entry and exit off Miller Alley.
An official borough notice about the Fraser Street realignment project is available on this page.
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