Three new trees on West Beaver Avenue are tentatively slated to replace the seven mistakenly cut down earlier this month, State College borough engineer Amy Story told business owners and residents Monday.
She said the plan, presented by the borough public-works department, is designed to place trees more strategically on the north side of West Beaver Avenue’s 100 block.
‘We have an opportunity to make a better sidewalk-pedestrian area,’ Story said. She said the plan would allow better pedestrian flow and more space for businesses to make use of sidewalk area, such as for al fresco dining.
But several borough residents and business operators, gathered for a public meeting about the Fraser Street realignment project, expressed concern with that approach. Resident Merrill Budlong called the plan ‘totally unacceptable.’
It ‘doesn’t make sense,’ Budlong said. The earlier trees ‘came down by mistake. If the mistake had not been made, you would have worked around seven trees. … I want seven trees.’
Saint’s Cafe owner Craig Avedesian, whose cafe fronts West Beaver Avenue, said the trees provided shade around his business. Without them, more sunlight will hit the cafe and increase its energy costs, he said.
Saint’s will need to add awnings or other shade sources, Avedesian said.
He and some others at the public meeting suggested that the borough expand its tree-replacement plan to include perhaps five new trees — up from three. Story said she’ll present the idea to higher-ups in the borough government for consideration.
More than 20 people in all assembled Monday for the meeting, meant as an opportunity for people to ask questions and learn more about the Fraser Street realignment at West Beaver Avenue. Work on the project began June 20 and is expected to run through October or November, said Keith Porter, a senior project manager with the main contractor, Baiano Construction Co.
The effort got off to a rocky start on June 17, when a subcontractor performing site-preparation work reportedly misread some plans and cut down seven West Beaver Avenue trees that were supposed to stay.
Eventually — but not any time soon — the borough had planned to replace those trees, anyway, borough officials have said. They had wanted to replace them with cleaner types of trees that would create more shade but wouldn’t lead to so many sidewalk droppings there, on the 100 block.
Also part of the eventual plan: The borough wanted to situate new trees to foster better pedestrian flow, public-works Director Mark Whitfield said last week.
He has said Baiano will bear ultimate responsibility for replacing the fallen seven trees, though, since they were not meant to come down as part of the Fraser Street realignment.
‘I love trees,’ project manager Porter said after the Monday meeting. He said the three replacement trees envisioned under the current plan would be four-inch-caliper trees standing 10 to 12 feet tall when initially planted there.
Plus, Porter said, the new trees would have root systems that tend to migrate downward instead of outward. The former trees at the site, he said, had more outward-migrating root systems, making them more likely to disrupt the surrounding sidewalks over the long term.
As for the street-realignment project itself, Porter said the contractor plans to work in phases to straighten and clean up the intersection. He said workers may finish heavy work on the north side of West Beaver Avenue’s 100 block within a few weeks. There, they are widening the sidewalk by several feet.
The next phase, Porter said, will focus on the land immediately west of South Fraser Street’s 100 block. After that, workers will shift their attention to the north side of Beaver Avenue, then to Fraser Street between College Avenue and Calder Way, and finally to the east side of Fraser Street.
A goal, Porter said, is to ‘never have both sides (of the intersection) torn up at the same time.’
Construction is expected to slow for the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts in July, to help keep downtown traffic flowing during that relatively congested period. At some point during the construction cycle, though, the 100 block of South Fraser Street may become — temporarily — a one-way street, Porter said.
Several downtown business operators expressed frustration with elements of the project, some of them saying they’d like better communication about work schedules and the like. Jody Alessandrine, the Downtown Improvement District executive director, asked if traffic-signal timing on West Beaver Avenue may be adjusted during the construction process to help alleviate congestion.
Story said the state Department of Transportation would have jurisdiction over that matter. She’ll check into it, she said.
On another front, Jody Harrington, the owner of Ion on Calder Way, expressed several concerns related to the planned Fraser Centre project. The complex is expected to be built at the northwest corner of West Beaver Avenue and Fraser Street, though a groundbreaking date has yet to be announced.
‘I’m all for making this part of town better,’ Harrington said. But he’s worried about what prolonged and repeated construction processes will mean for businesses already trying to do business there, he added.
He also lamented the condition of the site where Fraser Centre is to be built, saying that it’s looking ragged.
‘I think there’s a bit of a double standard with it,’ Harrington said. ‘ … Who represents us here? Who helps us out with this? I can’t talk to Susquehanna (Real Estate, the project developer) and tell them to get it together. I can’t enforce those codes. I can’t make sure the pedestrian walkway (doesn’t have) a half-assed fence draped across it.’
Story said she appreciated the information and encouraged locals to come forward with such observations and share them with the borough.
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