COMMUNITY ACTION ALERT--- Important Sometime yesterday (Wed. Oct. 25, 2001) two prize ginko trees at 45th & Baltimore were cut down at the behest of Sunoco. There had been three trees. Only the middle one remains. These are unusual-looking trees, very identifiable by their odd branch and leaf structure. The leaves turn golden in the fall.
We noticed this crime last night upon returning home about 10PM. It was obvious that Sunoco had decided its two large lighted signs could better be viewed without the "nuicance" of the two trees obstructing them. These were street trees, not privately-owned trees on Sunoco property. As such, they belong to us all collectively, and their removal or trimming requires a permit from the Fairmount Park Commission. Such a permit was not -- and would not -- be issued. The removal of these trees was both a legal and a moral crime. While we try to beautify our community by planting hundreds of trees (i.e. the Walnut Street project, the up-coming Chestnut St. project, and countless Baltimore Avenue-in-Bloom plantings -- not to mention numerous individual and block projects), we have a faceless corporation disrespecting all of these efforts in the name of making their sign monstrosities more visible! This is absolutely outrageous. I have contacted our local Fairmount Park arborist (Rich Sunday 610-352-8644). He will be checking out the complaint. A few more calls to him may not hurt, but may not help either. I assume he will do what he can to follow up. I gave him the info below. I contacted Sunoco Cust. Service (1-800-786-6261). The address of the Sunoco station is 4500 Baltimore Ave. (when they look it up on the computer). Sunoco admits that they did authorize the tree removal, but refuses to say anything more, and refered me to the contractor: Barger @ 610-358-5240. The Barger office manager (Jennifer Boris) says that, yes, Sunoco contracted to have the trees removed. Did not have any answer as to how this could have been done without a permit. Got very defensive, and then said Barger actually sub-contracted it out. Sounds like they know they're in deep trouble, and laying groundwork for blame elsewhere. I'm thinking out loud here: Can we organize to funnel TONS of protest calls to Sunoco, to the contractor, to Blackwell's office, Fairmount Park exec. director Bill Mifflin. Should the police be contacted? The local U.C. Review, the Inquirer? The 5 local news stations? I think the more bad publicity, the better. I may have done some of these things myself by the time you read this, but we always need multiple calls to get noticed. I don't have some of these phone #s available yet. Maybe others can follow up and post them to the listserve. We should not have to be wasting our time on these sorts of atrocities time and again. It does point out the difficulty of living in U.C. where many outsiders (absentee landlords, etc.) strongly impact our lives and we can only react AFTER the damage is done. Let's get together on this, and force Sunoco to replant similar-sized trees. (Very expensive, but it can be done). That is the only acceptable solution (other than closing down the station, which is on my dream-list). Neil Lifson ---- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to the list named "UnivCity." To unsubscribe, see <http://www.purple.com/list.html>. Archive is at <http://www.mail-archive.com/>.
