GREENWICH VILLAGE — Residents' fury at New York University's expansion in the Village is blossoming anew as the school prepares to cut down seven 30-year-old cherry trees to make way for the first building in its development plan.
The multi-use building to be constructed at 181 Mercer St. will eventually hold dozens of classrooms, training and practice spaces for performing arts, a replacement for the Coles gym that's currently at the site and faculty and student housing, the university said.
But locals like Beth von Benz and her neighbors around Bleecker and Mercer streets are furious that the school won't save the cherry trees that have stood there for decades.
"Everyone is away and they are using this perfect timing to destroy these trees," von Benz said, referring to the late summer timing.
Von Benz said she contacted the school and was told the trees are too old to be relocated.
"We actually, after much effort, found someone to move them, but she said in this weather and time of year, they wouldn't survive the move," von Benz said. "It's very sad."
NYU spokesman Matt Nagel said the school "took a number of steps as well as consulted with the NYC Parks Department to see if the cherry trees could be transplanted locally, and when that was not possible, decided to donate their wood to a local not-for-profit."
Nagel said the school consulted with two arborists — the second "recommended by the community" after the first said the trees could not survive a transplant — and both agreed that "only three of the seven trees might survive a move, and only under the right conditions: a relocation site with irrigation, plenty of sunlight, and a hole measuring at least 8 feet in diameter to receive each tree’s 'rootball.'"
The school asked the Parks Department's help to find nearby sites to try to move those three trees, "but in the end, no suitable place was found," Nagel said.
"The second arborist concurred with previous recommendation that the trees are near the end of their useful life span and added that the time of year and rigorous transplant requirements make the probability of mortality for these trees quite high," Nagel added.
NYU is donating the wood from the trees to non-profit Big Reuse, which Nagel said "trains disadvantaged New Yorkers in the skills necessary to start a career in sustainable building industries."
Big Reuse "reclaims building supplies, fixtures, furniture, and urban wood and repurposes it into useful green building products," Nagel said.
The school has planted seven cherry trees along the north side of Bleecker Street, according to Nagel: three Kwanzan cherry trees and four transplanted from the west side of the Coles building.
"Also, as is customary with New York construction projects that involve tree removal, NYU is paying restitution to the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, and those funds will be used to plant new trees in New York City," Nagel said.
The spokesman added that once their construction project is complete, NYU will be responsible for planting new trees around the perimeter of the new building at 181 Mercer St.
