[Image via Curbed]
As you know, the long-awaited revamp is happening at Astor Place and Cooper Square these next two years... The plan includes enlarging Cooper Park, streamlining the street grid and creating new permanent pedestrian plazas. Not to mention adding 60 additional trees. Also among the changes: a new-look subway plaza with raised flower beds, more seating and wider sidewalks... and trees ... per the rendering above...
Unfortunately, the existing trees here were either in the wrong place or just not fit for the new-look Astor Place. Several readers were shocked to find that workers had chopped down the trees (Birch?) along here...
[Photo via @EVPinhead]
To echo what @EVPinhead put on Twitter about this: #WTF
Updated:
Here's another view via EVG reader John M.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Five years later, Astor Place apparently ready for its 2-year reconstruction project
An updated look at the all-new Astor Place
Workers chopping down the trees at 51 Astor Place
Oh no! I'm excited about the redesign (don't *love* it, but agree that the area is dangerous and changes are needed), but damn, they couldn't repave that plaza without chopping down trees? Boo!
ReplyDeleteWhy would they chop down perfectly healthy trees? This is progress?
ReplyDeleteF8cking hell!!! That's horrible!
ReplyDelete...And somewhere in a small downtown office cubicle, a project manager checks a box...
ReplyDeleteI don't get it. How is this not a criminal act in Bloomturd's "green" New York?
ReplyDeleteHey, this makes perfect sense. With no pavement broken, with no actual construction work begun, the top priority was absolutely to get rid of those goddamn trees immediately because they were probably going to get in the way nine to twelve months from now at the earliest. Logic!
ReplyDeleteIt's so ironic that there are always arbor day presentations at the local schools, encouraging the kids to plant and care for trees, and the city proceeds to kill perfectly healthy trees in a public space.
ReplyDeleteSure wish there was someone to contact, and then actually find out what the story is on this.
ReplyDeleteNothing but conjecture at this point.
That's progress for ya. Killing perfectly healthy trees to create a iHuman docking station for people to occupy while staring vacantly into their phones.
ReplyDeletesomehow the death star is to blame
ReplyDeleteBurden and Sadik-Khan strike again!
ReplyDeleteAnother pedestrian (as in bland) plaza. Worked so well in Times Square. You know retail rents there are at an all-time high!
And high rents are GOOD for New York, right?
OOH nothing upsets me more than gratuitous savage removal of essential city trees. Someone in charge should sacrifice a toe for a tree.
ReplyDeleteWhile this is upsetting to me personally, we know this was going to happen as part of the re-landscaping. But I'm wondering about the extreme preemptive aspect of this act.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's necessary so that the roots die off so they can excavate these things without using dynamite? I mean; it couldn't be just that someone wanted to be an absolute dick, could it?
I'm really curious.
Cement wading pools for 20-somethings are needed when you have 14 roommates. New York City is like, awesome! Ya!
ReplyDeleteOk, at risk of being vilified as a construction professional, I happen to know that the survival chances of those existing trees through the construction process was nil.
ReplyDeleteSure, question the timing of their removal (couldn't they have waited until the leaves had fallen?), but in the end the damage done to their root systems by the re-paving effort would have taken them years to recover from. Better to plant new ones after the work is done.
I count 3 stumps, but there seem to be at least 7 trees in the rendering just above. So it's going to be ok. Eventually.
I'm not into gardening & plants, but can't trees be transplanted to a new home? .. TSP lost some over the past months, why not move them there & if need be wait until the spring to do it. WTF was the rush in just butchering perfectly good trees>?< I'm sure there won't be any major construction for at least Spring...
ReplyDeleteWhat we haven't figured out is the question of trees.
ReplyDeleteYo wizzles and wizzabellas! Waste space at home so we can have trees. #natureisdope #stopburningbush
ReplyDeleteExemplifies Bloomberg's corporate, technocratic—authoritarian regime and symbolizes Bloomberg's destruction of NYC/EV in the name of upward progress in his a shiny, elite, city, and to maker room for the creating create an urban environment where it's mostly high-end commercial and residential districts conducive to yunnies, yuppies, and his godsend billionaires. This is Bloomberg's asserting his right to both govern and shape the city into a place for corporate elites and high-level professionals.
ReplyDeleteThe Amanda Burden article is rather remarkable. Is she unaware these developers are laundering money? Is she aware there is no shortage of luxury rentals? That most of these new buildings remain empty. Like the Sculpture of Failure and the Death Star in Astor Place? And that most people wouldn't consider a $3,500, 1 bedroom apartment affordable? Does Amanda have a pulse or is the brain dead?
ReplyDeleteAmanda Burden. "It" girl from the 60's. For God's sake, eat something!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 10/10 8:46,
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be a strong current of animism in this neighborhood. Who'd have thought?
I don't think I've ever even noticed those trees.
@ Anonymous 10/10 8:46
ReplyDeleteAnimism is about, well, animals. These, as a matter of fact, are trees that got destroyed. We don't normally put them into the Animalia Kingdom but, instead, the Plantae. Maybe you mean Dendrophiles?
PS to Anonymous 10/10 8:46
ReplyDelete...or even naturism. There are some Druids around.
Or, really, maybe it's just people who like the results of photosynthesis and also make use of the little bit of shade those things gave.
They clean the slate of trees so they can plant trees. Hypocrites. I cannot wait until Bloomberg goes the hell away- he has to fiddle with everything and cannot leave any part of NYC alone- It's like we are his giant ant farm so he can play God.
ReplyDeleteGiven the breakneck pace of construction on this site and its complete transformation since then, at last we all understand why it was so vitally necessary to cut down those trees one year ago. Hard to believe how radically different the spot looks today.
ReplyDeleteImagine the consequences if IBM employees or St. John's University students and faculty had their view of K-mart obstructed! Imagine the loss of cultural awareness if passersby had been distracted from appreciating that Jeff Koons sculpture!
In closing, I offer this link in tribute to those crummy loser trees:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fANTtBJoXcA