A legal effort by a group of homeowners to save 13 mature trees from a street bordering Como Lake ended last week with most of the decades-old maples reduced to stumps on the same day residents attempted to file a legal injunction against the city.

Crews contracted by St. Paul Public Works removed 10 mature trees last Thursday, the first stage in sidewalk construction along the block, which has no sidewalks on either side, as part of the Wheelock-Grotto street reconstruction project.

Four homeowners had filed a request for a temporary injunction, or restraining order against tree removal, that same day, after filing a legal appeal the day before against a Ramsey County District Court decision in the city’s favor.

The street reconstruction project aims to install sidewalks, street lighting, new water mains and other improvements in sections of streets around East Como Boulevard, Arlington Avenue, Dale Street and Maryland Avenue and is scheduled to roll out this year and next.

Maple trees 70 to 100 years old

The four plaintiffs — Rita Amendola, Mary Jane Sommerville, Aric Wilber and Jeff Clark — maintained in their civil suit against the city that they were repeatedly assured over the course of nearly a year that the city would work with them to install sidewalks on Parkview Avenue while doing its best to preserve their mature trees, which included multiple maple trees that were at least 70 to 100 years old.

They said the city previously talked up the likelihood of “meandering” the sidewalk around the trees, and pointed to correspondence or discussions on Sept. 16, Oct. 8 and Feb. 21. To their surprise, on March 11 the city indicated it would install the sidewalk on the south side of the street alone, but it no longer mentioned “meandering” the sidewalk for tree preservation.

Instead, they woke one day in mid-March to red “X” marks around 13 trees on one side of their block, indicating the majority of their 20 mature trees would be removed within days.

The plaintiffs filed a lawsuit March 20 under the Minnesota Environmental Rights Act, or MERA, buying them some time as the city agreed to hold off on tree removal pending a court decision, which came down in the city’s favor on March 31.

Judge Edward Sheu found that “no strict promises were made regarding tree preservation” and that removing 10 trees lacked the “severity or quality” of a MERA violation. He noted that case law showed entire forests had been lawfully removed and replanted for major projects. While it may take decades for a sapling to become a mature tree, “the Maple trees are not endangered, and they can and will be replaced,” he wrote.

City, neighbors respond

In its legal response to the lawsuit, the city attorney’s office noted that the first phase alone of the Wheelock-Grotto project will cost $10 million, and any delay will add to costs borne by taxpayers, triggering the need for a $1 million bond.

“To potentially shutter construction for an entire already limited weather-related season with rising inflationary prices and construction costs demands that a significant bond be posted by the plaintiffs,” wrote an assistant city attorney in a legal filing on March 26. “Status quo will be maintained as the trees will be replanted.”

In court filings, the city “seemed to believe that their one-to-one replacement of trees on our block would make up for the destruction of 70-plus-year-old Maple trees,” wrote Sommerville, in an open letter to City Council Member HwaJeong Kim and other city officials this weekend.

The city ultimately removed 10 trees last Thursday, the day after residents filed their appeal of Sheu’s order.

“I was also deeply disappointed in the process (through which) the city plowed through this initiative,” Sommerville wrote. “The city claimed to be ‘engaging’ with its citizenry throughout, but lied to us repeatedly. In the end, it was clear that the city would do what they wanted all along.”

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Sommerville said that adding insult to injury, she received an estimate in the mail for $13,600 “for our house alone,” she wrote. “That was certainly salt in the wound.”

Work trucks arrived Thursday, and tree after tree was removed by “noise-deafening saws,” she wrote.

“When I was brave enough to go outside, after all the trucks departed, I didn’t recognize my yard, nor my street,” Sommerville wrote. “The rope ladder swing that my husband built during COVID lay on the ground. … My family and neighbors are heartbroken. But we are also very frustrated and angry.”