By Della Hasselle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — The Parks Department chopped down 56 trees from a park near Lincoln Center to make more room for Fashion Week, the Daily News reported.
The arborcide of the Damrosch Park’s trees was approved by city officials and discussed with the community board, Parks spokeswoman Vickie Karp told the News.
“These trees would have been removed during redevelopment of Lincoln Center and the park in any event,” Karp told the News.
Karp noted that the 56 London Plane trees, which were cut down six months ago, were in a state of decline.
Additionally, 11 healthy trees were transplanted from the park, located on West 62nd Street between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, Karp told the News.
The pruning occurred in the midst of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Million Trees NYC program, a plan to plant a million trees over the next 10 years. In Damrosch Park alone, 340 trees will be planted over the next several months, Karp told the News.
In light of the program, some community leaders felt the Lincoln Center trees were unjustly hacked.
“When you talk about all the pomp and circumstance they mayor is giving to planting all these trees and you hear something like this—it doesn’t jibe,” Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito told the News.
Some local residents agree.
“For urban trees, they were in good condition,” Ken Smith, a landscape architect, told the News. "They were alive and they were providing shade. It was a nice grove.”
