Trees for Life Oregon aims to expand Portland’s tree canopy by ensuring policies that achieve that goal. We don’t have the capacity to investigate most individual tree-loss cases that residents bring to our attention. However, we are highlighting particular situations that illustrate how current regulations in practice all too often result in the loss of our sorely needed large-form trees. We also suggest what concerned neighbors might do to strengthen the City’s performance, though sadly those options are currently limited.

By the time Mirabai Peart noticed the sign posted about the new development at SE Ellis and 142nd Place, it was probably too late to have any say in the developer’s plans.

The 4.6-acre site, just north of the Springwater Corridor and west of Powell Butte, is slated to become a 34-lot subdivision. She wanted to save some of the trees at risk of being removed. Of particular concern for Peart, who lives a few blocks away, is the 52-inch-diameter Douglas-fir that sits on SE Ellis next to an old house that will also be demolished for the new development.

What she eventually learned is that the developer, ClearWater Homes LLC, has the legal right to cut down the venerable Douglas-fir, and that the Title 33 zoning code applying to this land division situation gives developers wide leeway in deciding which trees to preserve and which to take down, as long as certain standards-based numbers and percentages are met. The process by no means protects the highest value trees.

Rallying Neighbors

Through online Bureau of Development Services (BDS) information, Peart consulted the developer’s plan, whose absence of the Douglas-fir and other large trees indicated a loss of canopy that concerned her. Armed with 75 signatures she collected from nearby residents, on October 16, 2019, she and a few other neighbors attended the BDS project hearing to contest the developer’s tree removal plan.

At the hearing, she says, developer Ante Skoro of ClearWater Homes, who with his brother are local, second-generation homebuilders, told her that he cares about trees but that PBOT was requiring that the tree come down to make way for a widening of 142nd Place.

She learned differently from PBOT planner Bob Haley, who told her that the tree was outside of the public right-of-way and his bureau did not require that it be removed. PBOT even provided Peart with a map (shown here) showing various tweaks the developer could make to safely preserve the tree and its root system, including by narrowing the sidewalk. Urban Forestry tree inspector Andrew Gallahan confirmed that the tree was on private property, and that his division, he wrote Peart in an email, would support preserving and protecting “this significant tree.”

Despite neighbors’ in-person weigh in, the BDS hearings officer approved the developer’s plan. The officer set conditions that involved protecting a curly willow tree during removal of an on-site septic system, but ignored the massive Douglas-fir. Developer Ante Skoro, by choosing option three, one of six listed in Title 33’s “Minimum Tree Preservation Standards” (33.630.100), was hewing to code.

How so? The option Skoro selected is to “preserve at least 50 percent of the trees that are 20 or more inches in diameter and at least 30 percent of the total tree diameter on the site.” Five of the trees his arborist flagged for preservation are 20 inches or more. And the total diameter of the seven trees Skoro proposes to retain equate to 179 inches, or 51 percent of total tree diameter, according to BDS’s Decision of the Hearings Officer report.

The trees to be preserved range in diameter from 14 inches to 44 inches, and comprise a curly willow, a sycamore, a Sitka spruce, a sweet gum, two Western redcedars, and a Western hemlock. The giant Douglas-fir is not among them.

Disheartened But Harboring a Broader Vision

The hearing left Peart feeling “disillusioned” about the process and the dismissal of so many neighbors’ signatures. Since then she has urged neighbors through Facebook, NextDoor, and doorstep handouts to ask ClearWater Homes to “stand up for the legacy of this tree, which has probably been standing longer than most of us have been alive.” But she realizes the case is likely closed. As of early March, says, Peart, the Douglas-fir is still standing.

But in an email, the developer told Trees for Life Oregon that he will be taking it down.

In hindsight, Peart feels that the neighbors’ request to the City that all trees on the site six-inches diameter or more be saved—not only the Douglas-fir—was “asking for too much.” She also regrets not contacting the Powellhurst-Gilbert Neighborhood Association sooner than she did. Neighborhood associations generally have more sway than individual neighbors when they write in and show up at BDS development hearings.

Despite Peart’s failure to have the BDS hearings officer preserve the Douglas-fir that she and her neighbors treasure, in late March she reported that she and nearby residents are not giving up. They are interested in rallying sponsors to help purchase the lot the tree is on to create a children’s park around it. This is a highly worthy endeavor, and one that the Save the Giants group in Eastmoreland has told her that, based on their own experience, will be very challenging. The current economic environment will magnify the task.

The Developer’s Perspective

Peart contacted ClearWater Homes to propose a children’s park around the Douglas-fir. As of early April, she had not received a response.

Replying to a Trees for Life Oregon request for his take on the situation, on March 2, 2020 ClearWater Homes’ Ante Skoro emailed this:

“The transportation bureau representative Robert Haley looked into the land division conditions of approval and noticed that it wasn’t a transportation condition of approval to take down that tree. Mr. Haley later reached out to me asking me why I gave incorrect information to the concerned neighbors, and forwarded me an email from the neighbors regarding the tree in question. After explaining to Mr. Haley that the approximate 52” diameter Douglas fir needed an extensive RPZ (Root Protection Zone), he concurred with me that the tree needs to be taken down. The tree is located in the middle of 1 future lot and the RPZ zone would extend well into the city’s future city street. Earlier in the application process we wanted the future street in a different location for a better lot configuration but the city pushed back, stating they have specifications we have to abide by for city street alignment...which tells us the city will not allow us to reconfigure the street. Lastly, the tree being in the middle of a future lot would hinder any development on that lot given the location and RPZ...this would cause a financial burden to us which we cannot cushion. I wish the neighbors would understand that it is not our intention to remove trees for no specific reason, we have been building in the Portland Metro area for over 20 years and have held a great reputation in our community.”

Trees for Life Oregon has sought clarification from PBOT about whether or not, per Mr. Skoro, Bob Haley “concurred” with him “that the tree needs to be taken down” due to the RPZ issue. PBOT promised the information but to date has not provided it.

Peart’s take on the RPZ is that the developer’s concern “doesn’t hold water.” As seen in the photo, the existing driveway pavement is a lot closer to the tree than the road extension and new sidewalk would be required to go, she says. Moreover, she notes, “there are other equally significant Douglas-firs in the neighborhood such as one at the corner of SE Ellis and 139 th Avenue that exist healthily with roads closer to them than this road would be to this tree.” She laments the fact that “most people who make decisions about these trees don’t even go to look at them. If they did, they’d see what I’m saying about the RPZ.”

The crux of the problem appears to be one of money for Mr. Skoro. As Trees for Life Oregon has illustrated, developers who feel strongly about preserving large trees find the wherewithal to do it. And by doing so, they generate positive relations with nearby residents.

Weak, Contradictory Code

Can the problem be entirely blamed on developers when the code provides them with such generous options? Title 33 allows the removal of “exempt” trees that are dead, dying, or on the City’s nuisance list. If the zoning code also took into consideration tree species worth retaining and the huge environmental value of large, established trees, individual specimens like the Douglas-fir on SE Ellis Avenue might be required to be saved. But it is not.

And yet this Douglas-fir provides all 11 of the “desired benefits of trees” that, according to Title 33 (33.630.010) “are to be considered early in the design process with the goal of preserving high value trees.” The same part of the code states that “the land division process provides the flexibility and opportunity to promote creative site design that considers multiple objectives, including the integration of trees.”

But if, due to cost, workload, or pressure to approve plans quickly, BDS staff are not encouraged to make large-form trees and the space they require integral to development plans; if staff thus do not fully exercise the “discretionary” in discretionary land division review; and if the process itself does not give developers strong incentives to be flexible and creative around tree preservation from the get-go, then most developers, like the one in this case, simply won’t be.

The Value of Large-Form Trees

Cost is paramount to most developers. But there is an opportunity cost to removing large, healthy trees that City regulators have ruled need not come down. When a developer cuts down such a tree that has special significance to neighbors, he loses their goodwill. He loses the chance to show he cares about the local community. And he loses a valuable asset on his property.

Alive, the 52-inch Douglas-fir slated to be taken out is worth an estimated $15,555. Every year it provides, pro bono, a bevy of environmental services that directly affect the health and well-being of nearby residents.

Annually this tree stores 6,118 pounds of carbon, intercepts 280 cubic feet of storm water, and removes 75 ounces of air pollution, based on i-Tree software calculations of an equivalent-size Douglas-fir that was inventoried in Alberta Park. In light of Portland’s bad air quality, it would seem the City might make a greater effort to preserve the most cost-effective air pollution controls known—large, mature trees.

Neighborhood Association Weigh In Matters

Although Peart’s neighborhood association was called in too late to help her case, according to Powellhurst-Gilbert Neighborhood Association co-chair Richard Dickinson, his group may have had some impact on another nearby development, at 14323 SE Ellis. The developer of that 1.1-acre site, which lies in a potential landslide hazard area, plans to divide the site into seven lots. Starting in 2016, Dickinson’s association expressed its deep concerns about the density of the development and tree preservation in light of the site’s steep slope and liquefied soil . Association members attended the BDS hearing, where the hearings officer approved the development density but did add specific language about measures required to be used to preserve and protect specific trees. This was language Dickinson says he hadn’t seen in prior cases his association had gotten involved with.

Were the extra tree preservation requirements the result of the neighborhood association’s engagement? Hard to know. “They were more likely to put in this language because people from the neighborhood association were watching,” Dickinson says he’d like to think. After all, his neighborhood association represents one of the largest and most diverse communities in Portland. The low-income single-parent families and non-English-speaking immigrants that make up much of Powellhurst-Gilbert are the very voices that the City says it wishes to hear and whose inequitable treatment Portland says it wants to remedy.

“In East Portland we’re used to being ignored and walked upon,” says Dickinson, a retired outdoor educator, “because we don’t have a lot of money. We’re an easy target for these developers.” His group steps in when it can to protest especially egregious elements of certain developments.

As of early April 2020, fences surround the protected trees on this other site, but development has not begun, according to Dickinson. Such multi-year delays are common in East Portland, he says, speculating that developers wait for more cash flow or better market conditions.

Creative Community Solutions

Peart’s vision for a children’s park is inspiring. If only the City would give developers in East Portland strong incentives (requirements would be better!) to devote some part of their properties to pocket parks that would benefit the health and well-being of surrounding residents.

Granted, it is more efficient for the City to maintain a few medium-size parks than many small ones. But highly local pocket parks provide just the sort of open space that, at time of writing, would be a godsend to families cooped up in tiny apartments and shared housing during the coronavirus.

Joint private-public funding and maintenance would require effort and creativity for sure. But the City could create an awful lot of goodwill in East Portland—an area City Council purports to want to improve—by considering the idea Peart and her neighbors are embracing.

In the end, Portland leaders who genuinely believe in environmental equity need to match the City’s regulatory framework—its laws and regulations across multiple bureaus responsible for decisions about trees—with its lofty rhetoric about justice and improved well-being for less well-off Portlanders. This case of a lone Douglas-fir in East Portland encapsulates the disconnect.

--By Kyna Rubin, April 21, 2020