Some Kitsilano residents are worried that work to seismically upgrade Kitsilano secondary school will involve sacrificing more than a third of the school’s trees.
Approximately 40 of the 110 trees on the school’s property will be felled as part of the seismic upgrade to the historic high school, according to the Vancouver School Board.
Dunbar resident Penny Crawford was riding her bike through the area last weekend when she came upon the construction site and a magnolia tree in full bloom that had been cut down and left in a pile in the school courtyard. She said she saw more felled trees but she didn’t want to enter the restricted construction area to check.
She said passersby told her many of the trees around the former tennis courts were to be cut down to make way for an expanded parking lot.
“Folks are concerned,” Crawford said.
Raymond Afan, VSB project manager, said the new parking lot on the corner of 12th Avenue and Trafalgar Street may take a few of the trees, but he noted the renovated school will have less parking than it does with its current 85 spots reduced to 75.
He said the priority of the estimated $62.2 million renovation project is to make the school safe while at the same time save 50 per cent of the school, which was built in 1927.
“The site itself is rather small and there are all these requirements. From program requirements, areas of the classrooms, the gyms and a playing field. We all had to take that into consideration and when finally the designers gathered all the information, they came up with this design … and there will be some trees that need to come out because of that,” Afan said.
City of Vancouver project guidelines suggest the project planners “retain mature trees and shrubs that are healthy and attractive.”
Crawford wondered how the city could allow the trees to be destroyed.
“We are supposed to be a green city, this goes against that goal,” she said in an email to the Courier.
The city’s communications department referred Courier requests for information back to the VSB.
Afan said the project is as environmentally friendly as possible. The completed building will meet Gold Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards, he said.
Each tree cut down will be replaced by two new ones, he said, noting 80 new trees will be planted on the school site by the completion of the project in 2017.
Jordi Sancho, who lives adjacent to the property, has photographed the trees since he first found out two years ago about the planned renovation. He said he feared from the start the trees would not survive the project and is not moved by the tree replacement plan.
He said it makes no sense to take out established trees that don’t need any watering or maintenance in favour of new and vulnerable landscaping.
“A new tree might have a hard time establishing ground,” he said. “You can’t replace an 80-year-old tree. There is no replacement.”
Sancho started an online petition last week asking the Vancouver School Board to save some of the most established trees on the site — four sycamores he estimates are 80 years old.
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