‘You are clearly in the wrong.’ Lexington, developer still at odds over protected trees
Officials with a Lexington engineering firm will return to the Urban County Planning Commission in July after the firm cut four protected red oak trees and failed to satisfy city officials Thursday its tree replanting plan was sufficient.
Vision Engineering said it removed the four trees it had originally agreed to protect because the trees were in an area with varying heights and it would have had to put a retaining wall in and a fence. It was not feasible and the trees may not have survived, they said.
At a June 13 meeting, Jihad Hallany, president of Vision Engineering, had proposed planting 116 trees on the property at 4085 Harrodsburg Road. The property is being developed for retail at the front of the site and town homes and single-family homes at the back. Vision Engineering is overseeing the project for the Greer Companies.
But city officials and the planning commission wanted more details about the tree planting plan and asked Hallany to return to Thursday’s planning commission meeting.
During Thursday’s meeting, Hallany proposed planting 40 large trees. Those trees will eventually have a much larger canopy than smaller trees and should satisfy city rules regarding tree mitigation, he argued. Those 40 trees are an addition to other trees that will be planted on the property.
“We are at three times what is required,” Hallany said.
Eric Sutherland, the urban forester who caught the removal of the trees earlier this year during a site visit, said the plan was not satisfactory and believed there should be at least an additional 43 trees to meet the tree mitigation requirements.
‘Clearly in the wrong’
Thursday’s meeting became heated after several planning commission members said they felt Hallany needed to listen to the concerns of the city’s environmental services division, which oversees urban forestry.
Hallany designed the project and placed buildings on the property that required the construction of the retention walls around the four trees. That’s not the planning commission’s fault, said Graham Pohl, a planning commission member and architect.
“Your whole argument about the retaining wall is ridiculous,” Pohl said. “You are clearly in the wrong. It is extremely annoying and a waste of our time. The way I see it you need to be listening to environmental services and what they need and get it done.”
The plans for the property, located adjacent to the Fountains at Palomar near Man O War, have gone through several re-iterations.
In March, the commission approved a new plan after Hallany returned and asked the commission to increase the number of parking spaces on the property from 160 to 311 to accommodate a tenant who wanted additional parking. The city has done away with minimum parking spaces requirements to stop “over parking” or using too much land for large parking lots that are rarely full.
At the time, Hallany was able to devise ways to get more parking on the property, such as decreasing the width of parking spaces, said Robin Michler, a planning commission member.
He came up with a creative solution to get the parking spaces he and the tenant wanted, Michler said.
“That’s the kind of creative thinking we would expect,” Michler said.
Hallany, however, said he believed his plan satisfied all the requirements for a tree mitigation plan.
“This plan follows the zoning ordinance,” Hallany said. Hallany said he was wrong not to ask the urban forester if he could cut the protected trees on the property, which is required under the ordinance. Developers submit inventories of protected trees on the property during the development plan. Protected trees include older trees, certain types of trees such as bur oaks, and trees of certain diameters.
The commission eventually decided to ask Hallany to return to the July 25 meeting to see if city and Vision could come to an agreement on a tree replacement plan.
