Here’s a picture of a large, beautiful old oak tree that has stood for at least one hundred years, maybe even two or three hundred. This picture was taken just a few weeks ago on Big Hollow Road, next to Michael’s, across the street from Barnes & Noble. Here’s what the same parcel looks like now:
The property was recently sold, and now it’s being cleared to make way for a new strip mall (because if there’s one thing Peoria needs, it’s another strip mall). The City of Peoria has no tree protection ordinance, although attempts have been made to establish one for many years. Eleven years ago, a giant white oak was removed from the Michael’s property, even though it was in the corner of the lot and not obstructing anything, and even though the developer assured neighbors it would be spared. Now another ancient oak is gone.
I don’t know if a tree ordinance is a good idea or not. The prospect raises a number of concerns about property rights and government power. I guess I just wish people would, of their own accord, value old trees like this and not so cavalierly uproot them in the name of “progress.” Commercial development that incorporated natural features of the land would be so much more interesting. But there seems to be a blueprint for strip malls that all developers follow. As a result, we’re treated to the same, generic look wherever we go, not just in Peoria, but throughout most of the country. It’s a shame we can’t be more creative… and less destructive.
Were you being shrill or profane with this post?
I saw the “pending” sign on this piece of property a while back and I had a bad feeling.
Do any of our council members drive around the city and make note of how many “For Sale/Lease” signs there are on vacant business?
Thank goodness the Maloof Company had the foresight to shoehorn a mini-strip mall next to Schnucks. And that the land on Knoxville headed towards Dunlap is being carved up for a generic looking subdivision or more strip malls or whatever is going on with that.
Anyway, back to the original post……it absolutely stuns me when I hear someone say they had their old tree cut down because they are sick of picking up sticks or raking. Now if the tree is causing problems with your house, then I understand. But cutting down a beautiful old tree to eliminate yardwork?
while that was a nice tree and you hate to see them cut down don’t you think a few of them were taken out over the last couple of hundred years as we cleared farm land and our great cities were built?
Thats the great thing about trees, they are a renewable resource.
No way to tell the age from the pic. A picture of a leaf would help tell the type of tree. FOr these purposes I wil assume it is, in fact, and oak tree. There is no real perspective to determine the width of the boll.
If it was a burr or such, it could be 75-125 years old. If it is a white or other slower growing variety, then you could double that.
Gut instict tells me this is a younger tree.
1. That is one hell of a beautiful crown. Just gorgeous. A big boy like that attracts lightening. I have a white that is probably 300 yrs old but gnarly looking. It gets hit about once a decade with lightening.
2. Looks to be extremely close to that house. I bet it was significantly smaller when the house was built…and that house doesn’t look ‘ancient’.
Sad to see such a pretty specimen go…
That tree would have made a nice overhead to an outdoor patio for a restaurant/coffee place. Bet with it’s size it was even cool in the summer. Instead it will be replaced by a super hot oversized asphalt parking lot.
Small business start up loans!!! They are amazing… the government pays all of your losses for two years… then you quit and start another… awesome. I worked for a guy while in college who did that, all the time paying himself and his wife (I never met her)two hefty management salaries.
How many restaurants in this town?
How many families or household units?
One per family, yet?
Here we go again taking down a big beautiful air scrubbing tree that scours toxins from the air, only to replace it with square boxes that attract wheeled vehicles that bring toxins to our air. Maybe I’m looking at it wrong. Sure strip malls bring jobs, but the tree would have added beauty and still scrubbed the air for all.
What a waste. I find myself agreeing with CJ completely, which doesn’t happen too often. I’ve admired that tree for years.
Maybe the new owner can plant, kill and remove some palm trees every year.
The loss of this decades-old tree is sad; I am glad people fought to save the tree on Forrest Hill.
When Michael’s went it that spot, I was always baffled by the contradiction of it: destruction of an oak tree grove versus putting in an arts and crafts store.
Sadly, by some of the responses here, grand, old trees in Peoria carry little weight unless they are the last one. (Recall some years ago the old oak tree near the Madison Park golf course that was dying – that’s how too many people are around here).
And again, building a strip mall there just reinforces my belief that city planners/engineers in this city spend all their time in their offices staring at computer screens. Have they even driven in that area and observed the traffic congestion?
The banality of “progress”. One world, one people, one giant slab of asphalt.
Where were the greenies on this one? Oh, tearing up a rail line, at taxpayer expense.
Good to see Peoriafan back defending the establishment. We need him to chime in once in a while to remind us of the need to think for ourselves.
i’m here to help anyway I can.
Whatever business is going into that site will not receive one farthing from me. This was a disgraceful and disgusting act. The land developers control everything in Peoria. The citizens, history, and nature are all secondary to land “development”.
This will bring in much needed tax money to fund more trails for all of us to enjoy. ” Trees are a renewable resource”,yeah if you wait around 100 years.
“Whatever business is going into that site will not receive one farthing from me.”
yea, that’ll show em!
The odds are really, really good that a few big old trees were cut down to develop the land where you live now. It might have been 100 yrs ago or 50 yrs ago but it happened. If you built a house in a corn field chances are good that lots and lots of trees were cut down to clear that land for that corn field. I would say a lot less trees are cut now than were 150 years ago when the original settlers’ were establishing their land.
Ed is right. Vote with your dollars. As for the “original settlers”, just because they did it, doesn’t mean we should. In case you haven’t heard, there are a lot fewer trees today, and we have plenty of strip malls. Now, we need trees, not strip malls. The only jobs this will create is temporary construction jobs (destruction for the tree). IF the new store survives, it will do so at the expense of existing businesses, no net gain.
The developers and architects that bother to manipulate their projects around the land/environment are few and far between in this area. One of the few is/was Noah Herman. They built some really nice properties over the years.
Bare land and parking lots with small saplings stuck here and there does make a property look inviting. Utilizing the older growth and natural lay of the land is a better way to go.
We need a new museum to teach people about local conservation. Luckily for us…
I am not what one would call a “tree hugger” of the 60’s and 70’s era, but do find it very sad that such a majestic tree was destroyed in the name of Progress. If we can do such wonderous technology and planning, why can’t we plan developments to work in conjunction with nature. This tree could have provided shade to the buildings and parking lots, absorbing water from run off from the paving to help prevent with flooding, etc. We need to plan better and it saves money in the long run by planning in this fashion.
I am a proud tree hugger! It’s fun if your walking in the woods to measure the girth of a tree by how many huggers it takes to circle it.
I don’t think there are any problems at all with a tree ordinance. We have historic districts to protect architecture and most of those include provisions that require “historic plantings” be preserved when possible. We have rules to protect the air and water. Trees, also, are an important natural resource that doesn’t “belong” to the property owner. They belong to all of us.
I still have never walked in Michael’s because of the tree incident. I won’t go in this strip mall either. If you love these trees, join me in boycotting these ridiculous corporations.
peoriafan, here’s the question: Does Peoria need another strip mall?
And what does this city have more of……beautiful, majestic trees in the middle of town or vacant strip malls?
Hmmm, we don’t have a Bass Pro Shop
More enlightened cities – Charleston, SC, for ex.) prohibit the cutting of majestic trees like this one. They realize their value.
Peoria just doesn’t care. It WANTS to look like every other repulsive strip-mall city. How sad.
Thanks for covering this CJ.
Boycott this strip mall.
I agree that the tree is nice and probably worth saving. There are hundreds of communities throughout the nation that have successfully implemented ordinances to protect specimen trees (of which this is a great example). But the ordinance needs to do more than just address old trees – it needs to set a standard including conduct of tree inventories prior to development, outlining acceptable levels of tree coverage for developments, encourage / require tree plantings as part of landscaping, require developers to design developments to preserve specimen trees, protecting trees during construction, etc.
If these are implemented appropriately, fairly and applied consistently, developers will develop plans for sites without excessive costs — it’s just a matter of thinking outside the box a little. However, the call to arms to boycott the new business is ridiculous. If you want to target someone (though it’s not like they did anything illegal or even improper since there are no standards). It’s most likely that the business that goes into that strip mall has nothing to do with the development of the strip mall. It’s just going to lease space from the developer.
Some facts from the Illinois extension:
http://web.extension.illinois.edu/forestry/il_forest_facts.html
Before European settlement, we had 13.8 million acres of forestland. Today, we have 4.4 million acres.
Illinois has some of the best growing conditions for beautiful hardwood trees in the world. I would argue that when settlers cleared the vast expanses of prairie vegetation, they also made room for some of the wonderful hardwood trees that grace our urban areas.
Yes, settlers destroyed a percentage of hardwood forests for farmland, but they also made
the growth of oaks, walnuts, cottonwoods, and hickories possible in urban area.
Sorry Peo Proud. Boycotting these businesses is far from “ridiculous.” They chose to locate in this particular spot. They could have established their business in a vacant inner-city building. They are taking the easy way out and hoping that we will all, like sheep, fall in line.
Tulip — true but a chain store coming into town after this is built is going to be looking for suitable space not necessarily researching the history of the construction of the building. All I’m suggesting is that the focus needs to be placed on the developer (who is responsible for the removal of the tree) versus the tenant who may have little to no background regarding what was present on the land prior to construction.
I bought my house and leased office space without first inquiring into actions that had occurred at the property when the buildings were first constructed. I think most would be in similar circumstances.
Proud
You are correct. The site of the ancient oak, now Micheal’s, was developed by First Rockford Group in 1999. “They were so cramped for space,” the tree just couldn’t be saved a company spokesperson said, that after they had promised activists that it would be spared.
Supporting Micheal’s is basically saying that what the developer did was ok, that we should just move on. Doesn’t that just suggest that we, as consumers, don’t really care? That the next developer can just do the same thing?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the Gulf oil spill. If I boycott local BP stations that’s going to hurt small business owners, right? But don’t you have to start somewhere.
By the way, here’s some information and thoughts about that ancient oak, which has now been gone over 10 years:
The tree, said to be 300 to 500 years old, stood on a land parcel at 5212 N. Big Hollow Road across from Glen Hollow Road.…
Activists and a neighborhood group will attend the meeting to plead for four other oak trees to be left as a buffer, said Joyce Blumenshine of the Sierra Club.
The large oak, felled on Wednesday, was in prime health, said city arborist Elroy Limmer. “Pretty sad, isn’t it,” said Limmer after he learned the tree had been cut down. “Now we can go count the rings.” “They’ve raped part of Peoria’s finest oak heritage,” said a bitter Blumenshine.
These pictures don’t do justice to what is leftover after the tree removal. It looks like someone dropped a bomb on that corner. It’s nauseating.
But the good thing is at least we’ll have one more strip mall to keep the conformity of that corner.
Who would want some dumb old 300-500 year old tree mucking things up.
Yes, the tree was beautiful to look at, but it doesn’t put food on the table. The fact is that someone was paying taxes on that property and every month that a prime piece of real estate sits vacant is lost revenue. It’s easy for y’all to armchair quarterback and talk about how someone else should incur the cost of your enjoyment of the tree, but it’s private property, and this is America, so unless you are all willing to pony up the value of the property it is the owners right to utilize it to its highest and best use. Flame away.
“The fact is that someone was paying taxes on that property and every month that a prime piece of real estate sits vacant is lost revenue.”
So maybe Grandview Drive should be carved up? Hell…..just think of the revenue.
And here’s the “Reality”….WE HAVE ENOUGH STRIP MALLS!!!!! How much revenue is lost on vacant strip malls??!! How about that great Midtown Cub Food???
Mazr – Grandview Drive common areas are not private property. That is the difference. Do you really want the Government siezing your private property rights because of a nice old tree? You go first.
No, I’d prefer the government snatch my land for a Cub Foods or maybe a ballpark……oh never mind.
Once again, do you think there are enough strip malls in the city of Peoria?
Sorry Mazr. Just caught this question back to me. I have never given the amount of strip malls in Peoria a serious thought. It has never dawned on me one way or another if there are too many/not enough. That is a market force and my expectation would be that it would be in balance. Perhaps if I was an elected official, which I’m not, I might feel compelled to give your question a little more reflection.
well said Reality
Thank you.
Paul, it wasn’t destroyed for “progress”; it was destroyed for another strip mall, they are not the same thing. And Elaine Hopkins agrees with me – Amazing – what is the world coming to???
What if this tree was in your neighbors backyard and they decided they wanted to have it cut down to put in a patio? Would it be ok for you to say no way thats a pretty tree and I dont want you doing anything with it even though its on your property? I dont like everything that some of my neighbors do on or to their property but I believe in their right to do it. I wonder how many farmers in peoria county have cut down an anciant oak to put in a pole barn or a cattle confinement?
Stephen, we can spend (or not spend) our money where we want to. If we don’t like what these people did, we don’t have to partonize their business. That’s our right, isn’t it?
No your completely right. I totally agree with you about not spending money at that shopping center. In fact I believe that if you truely care about this issue you shouldnt. However I do not believe that the city or my neighbors should be involved with a desicion to remove a tree from a piece of private property. If I want to cut down a grove of ancient oaks in my back yard that should be my right as the property owner. This tree was removed by the person, company whatever that owns the lot which is their right and I dont think that their rights should be infringed on because the neighbors want to save a tree. Once again in the city of Peoria this is a big deal but ten miles out of town a tree like this would be cut down so a shed could get built and no one would think anything of it.
Stephen,
Your assumption is that these trees belong to the property owner. I fervently disagree. They belong to all of us as citizens of this beautiful earth. I live in a historic district. Our houses and our vegetation do not belong to us. They belong to history and the community. We are restricted in how we can modify them. I would love to see this concept applied city wide in regards to historic vegetation.
When the community and history pay the taxes and the upkeep then you might have a case of ownership.
Tulip, many homes in the historic district have been grandfathered in to the district with blatant modifications that are not historically correct, specifically take a walk around Randoulph Roanoke and look at some of those messes. Recently a home in the historic district on high st was allowed to hang vinyl siding, which by the way is not historically accurate, using the arguement that wood replacement was to costly. Seems that exceptions can be made.
New subdivisions have charters that limit home owners on construction materials, colors, landscaping and acceptable additions are those community property also? Those owners are also restricted in their ability to modify their property?
Who pays the taxes on your home? Who does repairs and upkeep on your home? Who pays the bank for the mortgage? If your home belongs to me as a member of the community am I allowed to have a picnic on your front lawn, read a book in your living room or a bbq on your back patio? Do you have hours that are open to the public so we can all enjoy your community home and lawn? You do state that your home belongs to me as a member of the community. If a limb falls off your tree or a brick slides off your chimeny and lands on my car who do I need to talk to about the repair, the city or you as the owner of the property?
How old does a tree have to be to qualify for historic vegitation status and what department do we need to call before we can alter said veg? 100 year old tree, 50 year old tree. What if its 65.5?
You are welcome to picnic on my lawn or under my ancient trees. No problem here. Reading in my living room. That might be an issue. Most of these ordinance pertain to exteriors. Sorry. Plus, you’re probably allergic to cats.
The grandfathering clause is irrelevant. you can’t grandfather in a right to chop down trees. What’s the point?
BTW, I fervently disagreed with the High St. ruling that allowed them to put up siding. Our house has siding, put up by a previous owner. It’s a disaster. Squishy, ugly, and just plain wrong.
When I win the lotto I’m taking down the siding and putting up new clapboard.
And launching a campaign to encourage the city council to enact an historic tree ordinance.
First Ill add that I live in a historic home and have my own historic trees to picnic under. That wasnt the point of the statement. Second I have two cats and two dogs.
My point on the grandfathering thing is that many new neighborhoods have as high if not higher standards on what can and cannot be done to their properties so I guess I dont understand your point regarding your historic district arguement? Along with that many of the homes in the historic districts have been so hacked up and remuddeled, or are in such disrepair, they are hardly prime examples of historic architecture or landscaping.
Also it appears that when push comes to shove the historic district dosnt matter that much because a home in the thick of it was allowed to violate the rules. If you can hang vinyl Ill bet they could have cut a tree or two down also.
Finally you fail to address whether the home owner or the city is going to foot the bill when it comes to caring for all your pet trees. Who is responsible when I limb falls onto someone elses car? Who is going to decide what qualifies as trees that are no touch specimens? Wow that sounds like it could turn into alot of wasted time and money for the city. I prefer to enjoy my trees but also not give up my property rights. Good luck with the lotto.
So what store or business is going on that piece of land anyway?