After Three Years, Residents Want Trees Back

By Matt Dunning
POSTED AUGUST 29, 2008

It has been three and a half years since Tribeca residents living near the Holland Tunnel traffic rotary awoke one February morning, shocked to find a crew of city workers razing a grove of trees that had graced the southeast corner of Hudson and Laight Streets.

In no time flat, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection had knocked down at least nine fully grown honey locust and London pine trees in order to drill a shaft to a new city water main, yet to be completed, that is sunk 540 feet beneath the city’s streets.

Construction on the shaft appeared to have ended more than four months ago. All that remains at the site are a pair of dumpsters and a pile of debris.

Since then, not so much as a sapling has been returned to the site, and no one —not the DEP, not the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the land, and certainly not the nearby residents—seems to know when the site might become more than a vacant swath of dirt.

“Right now it’s just a big eyesore,” said Pam Harris, as she looked out the window of her apartment at 44 Laight St.  onto the barren site across the street. “It would be so pretty if we had trees there.”

“I have to look at this blight every day,” Laight Street resident Anthony Braddock said. “Let’s hope they [replace the trees] fast, but it probably won’t happen for a while. I’m pretty cynical when it comes to government.”

Hudson Street resident Fatima Steiner-Fantozzi, who still remembers  how excited she was when the Port Authority installed park-like spaces around the rotary’s periphery, is dismayed that the city is taking so long to clean up the mess that is her front yard.

“It looks like it’s been completely abandoned,” Fantozzi said. “I haven’t seen any activity down there for months. No one goes in or out. It’s really pretty ugly.”

A DEP spokesman, Angel Roman, could not say whether or not construction on the shaft is actually finished, and if it isn’t, when DEP crews might return to the site to complete their work.

“We are having discussions to determine how long the site will be closed to construction including landscaping work,” Roman said.

Although the site is “ready to be landscaped,” Roman said, the department is still negotiating with the Port Authority over the design of the green space.

He would not say what elements of the plan are at issue, nor would he specify how far along the DEP and Port Authority were in their negotiations.

Nearby residents’ complaints go beyond the loss of their trees.

Along Hudson Street, barricades still block the right lane adjacent to the drilling site, further squeezing the already clogged traffic during rush hour.

“Drivers are so angry, they’re honking and honking and honking and these cars just can’t get through,” Harris said. “It’s crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it.” 

The Department of Transportation did not return calls seeking comment on the status of the lane closure.

Susan Hort, a Hudson Street resident, said what is most frustrating is the DEP’s refusal to provide neighbors with any definite answers about its plans.

“Nobody seems to know what’s going on down there,” Hort said. “There’s nobody [on-site] to ask.”

Nor can she forget what the city said to her and her neighbors more than three years ago. “We were told it would be done in 18 months.”

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