Traverse City’s parking lots will become a little greener after city commissioners approved a new proposal Monday requiring trees to be added to parking lots built throughout the city.

The policy was proposed by the city’s Tree Committee, which includes members of the city planning commission and staff from The Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay. The ordinance requires deciduous canopy trees to be incorporated as part of the landscaping plans for new parking lots in the city. For parking lots with more than 20 spaces, at least eight percent of the lot must be comprised of landscaped areas, with one tree required to be planted for every 10 parking spaces. A typical 50-space parking lot, for example, would require five canopy trees to be planted within landscaped islands in the lot.

Among the benefits trees offer within parking lots include reducing stormwater runoff, shading cars and pedestrian walkways, reducing noise, screening views, absorbing excess heat radiating off large expanses of asphalt, and beautifying the landscape. Commissioners unanimously approved the ordinance change following support from city planning commissioners at a March 6 public hearing for the policy, with the planning commission voting 9-0 to recommend its adoption. The new policy will go into effective April 12 and will apply to any project that requires a building permit and has a value of $20,000 or more in the city; the ordinance will also be active in every zoning district except for one and two-family residential zones.

The ordinance is one of several tree-related projects moving forward this spring in the city. City commissioners also recently approved a tree planting project this spring that will see staff plant 220 new trees throughout the city at a cost of just over $19,000. The trees include a mix of maple, oak, yellowwood, honey locust, lilac, elm, linden, hackberry, and zelkova species. According to Parks and Recreation Superintendent Derek Melville, the spring planting “is one of the largest plantings (city staff) has done in recent history” and will bring the city’s total planned tree plantings this year to more than 350. City Manager Marty Colburn also tells The Ticker the city has partnered with the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and the Grand Traverse Conservation District on an ongoing project to plant “thousands of trees” in the Brown Bridge Quiet Area.

However, at least one city project will require the removal of potentially hundreds of trees this spring. Crews are now at work in the city-owned Hickory Hills park – which is closed to the public for the next month – to remove trees for both safety reasons and to clear terrain for more than $4 million in improvements coming to the park. Melville says improvements “will include nearly two miles of (new) Nordic trails, which require tree removal for the construction.” A new learners area, sledding hill, and intermediate slope from the lodge to the top of the existing Swede lift will also be added on the north side of the existing parking lot, according to Melville. On the south side of the lot, “a new slope will be added from the top of Pete (hill), as well as a narrow path from Pete to the location of the new lodge. Jack’s Trail will also be widened to expand terrain and park features,” Melville says.

Site planning for the project identified a “significant number of trees” that need to be cleared because they are either dead or diseased, according to Melville. Colburn calls the trees “widow makers,” meaning they have broken limbs or are at risk of falling and injuring park visitors. Colburn says city staff worked to save as many healthy mature trees as possible; those that have to be removed for terrain reasons will be converted into saw logs that can be sold to help defray project costs. Melville also stresses that staff “walked these proposed paths multiple times and have reduced the impact from the original design…we have saved many feature trees as a result.”

Staff also plan to undertake a planning process later this year to offset tree loss in the park. “We want to evaluate the remaining areas of the park and formulate a management plan to ensure the safety of park users and to enhance the park experience,” Melville says. “Part of that process will involve saving and transplanting existing small trees on-site when possible, along with placing seedlings that will be purchased for reforestation.”

Also at Monday’s commission meeting…
> Commissioners approved putting two charter amendments on the ballot in November. One would extend the length of time a commissioner serves as mayor pro tem from one year to two years, to run concurrent with the mayoral term. The mayor pro tem act as the mayor in his or her absence, including presiding over city commission meetings and co-signing city contracts and agreements. The second charter amendment, considered a “housekeeping” change by City Clerk Benjamin Marentette, would make the resignation of any city commissioner effective at the city’s annual organizational meeting.

> Commissioners rejected a $895,360 contract with Elmer's Crane and Dozer to make sidewalk repairs to sidewalks throughout the city. The scope of the project included "all sidewalks rated poor to very poor in the city," according to Colburn. The work was scheduled to take both the 2018 and 2019 construction seasons to complete. Commissioners Richard Lewis and Brian McGillivary cited the fact the city has not yet finalized the bonding process for a citywide sidewalk project as part of the reason for their objection, with Lewis saying it was "bad fiscal policy" to authorize the contract before the bonding process was finalized. McGillivary also questioned the map of planned repairs, noting some sections of sidewalk scheduled to be fixed were "islands" that didn't connect to the city's wider sidewalk network. The contract with Elmer's required five votes to pass; with McGillivary and Lewis objecting and Commissioner Brian Haas absent, the motion only earned four affirmative votes and so failed.

> Commissioners also rejected a $1.265 million pavement preservation project contract with Elmer's because of concerns over two projects, including the $300,000 paving of the north alley of Eighth Street and the reconstruction of Parking Lot P on State Street, which involves a lease agreement with a private developer. As with the sidewalk project, the motion required five votes to pass and only earned four affirmative votes, causing it to fail. Commissioners will likely revisit both contracts in the near future.