mean that in a negative way it's a it's a wooded area right so chairman what if we're able to
redirect i think it might be helpful but i wasn't done with my cross-examination so i'm sure you
can redirect when i was done but i'm sure you can but i just she can but i asked the question i just
was curious so this area is really not and i don't mean this to be negative not being really
it's not being maintained well i i would ask the owners if their main point is if a tree if a tree
falls or trees begin to fall in there it's you're going to be losing trees no one's really maintaining
right mr chairman on our uh site visit there the interior was unmaintained in other words fallen
trees were there and uh it was unmaintained i would imagine but don't know that if trees fell
you know onto the right-of-way onto the road somebody would have to remove somebody would
remove it but the interior of the forest was not maintained okay um mr lubar i'm gonna finish very
very quickly mr chair um mr livar um in your opinion as an arborist is it possible to develop
this site in a different with a different design where the trees on the on the on the border on
the periphery of the sites are are the the larger trees are maintained and and the the trees on the
interior are the ones that are more removed i would i'm going to object on the basis that he's
not an engineer or architect he does not design buildings i'm not sure in the same way that mr
masters did not want him to opine on the variant standards because he wasn't a lawyer he shouldn't
be answering that question well okay let me try to rephrase it then mr um louvar is is um is this
Is the tree planting replacement pattern that you studied and developed,
are you the one who developed it for this project?
uh the tree replacement pattern well i worked with laura laura was the one who
The tree replacement pattern.
Well, I worked with Laura.
really put the pen to paper okay well to the extent that you worked on it was that the only
possible way of of replacing and maintaining the trees or could there be other ways of
of taking some trees out of this property and leaving others behind
Well, my opinion is that you could put one house, you know, just a small,
if you were developing a single house, you would lose less trees.
That sounds crazy, but is there a life expectancy for these trees that are 75, 80 years old?
Yes, each tree we assigned a life expectancy to. And just because a tree is large doesn't mean it
has a lesser life expectancy but our life expectancy estimations only go up to 15 years
greater than 15 years in other words if the tree looks good now we have no uh reason to believe
that it won't look good in 15 years given normal a normal set of circumstances
mr lubar are you aware that some trees can get nominated um as what there are heritage trees in
the city uh well if i can correct you it's not nominated it's based on the tree size
um right are you aware that that one of the sycamore trees was nominated um on this site
uh well again it's not nominated there's a uh philadelphia heritage tree is defined under the
zoning code as native trees that are greater than uh 24 inches in diameter plus london plain trees
uh we're gonna have some testimony later from from one of um our witnesses about a nomination
that was made for for one of these trees but um i it sounds like i would want to cross-examine um
miss hansplant around the same issues that i was just asking mr louvar about
are we are we finished with mr louvar steve yes yes okay um i think that we just have
some redirect but we can save that for after you question laura that would be more efficient i think
so uh to the uh board uh laura hands plan is who mr masters would like to question
the transplant you're still under oath
yes hi Ms. Hansplant so um
same kind of questions I was um planning to ask you so um you are the you're the person who created
the plan for the planting and the and the removal and the replacement of the trees on this site
i am the landscape architect yes okay um so uh would you agree with me that the trees that i'm
that um where my cursor is moving here um these are the trees that mr lubra identified as about
75 feet tall the site plan steve uh area is not as accurate if you don't mind well the site plan
doesn't show right but the site plan doesn't show them as they exist it only shows them after they're
removed so that's hard to really see where they are when the site plan doesn't include them
and then would that be the same for the for the height of the trees that are on this
um property boundary yes those ones are a little shorter okay like how how much shorter do you
think i'm looking at the diameter i don't have a guess on the height they're slightly smaller
diameter would you agree with mr libar that these trees have provided shade and cooling effect for
the neighboring properties yes just like all the trees in this neighborhood yeah so if if you if
If you had designed the landscaping differently, would there be a possibility that you could
have preserved the tall trees on the perimeter and then made the, so then where the built
environment would have been shifted more towards the train tracks?
Laura, sorry.
I object to any question that has to do with Laura opining on the built environment as
far as the building.
Let's stick to the issue.
I'm not asking her to answer questions about the built environment.
i'm asking her about the location of the trees that were removed and that seems to me a very
germane question as to why we are leaving trees on that north property edge
we're not taking them all out you're talking about this edge
correct we're leaving those trees right and we're leaving trees in the corner yes no there
correct we're as far as we're leaving those trees right and we're leaving trees in the corner
there are trees in many places i i agree but if we if we go back and look at uh let's see 97 um
so the the trees that you're leaving are clustered around the new construction would that be would
that be fair to say they are also on the north property edge so in the top right where your
where your cursor is yeah that's right right there we're leaving those large trees
and we're leaving the large the trees at the other end if you move to the left
we're moving we're leaving yep we're leaving large trees all in that portion of the site as well
but where you're removing a lot of trees is up on is right next to the big apartment building
well the apartment building stretches all across that top end of the page so yes the center portion
is is adjacent to the driveway that services the back side of the co-op as is the portion of the
but the co-op extends across the entire top of the page so the trees that we are leaving in the top
right of the plan and the top left of the plan also benefit the co-op in fact actually steve
to your point i would argue that the trees in the top right have a greater benefit because they
they are visible and are near the tree the co-op at the north side of the plan the top as well as
the co-op building to the right so the trees in the corner are particularly I think for me we
prioritize this okay but the but you did testify these are shorter than the trees that were removed
up here well they're shorter immediately along the property line if you move down on the page
the large dots you see are also large trees yep these dots okay but these are the smaller ones
those are replacement trees oh these are also replacement trees so really the whole the whole
perimeter that's closest to this this building up here they're all replacement trees except for
this area on the left side well we were we were tucking in trees as i mentioned wherever we could
So the top corner that you pointed to, the top right corner, we have replacement trees.
That's not where we're taking trees out.
That's where we see an opportunity to plant new within the responsible parameters of the site.
I have no further questions.
So we'd like to redirect.
We'll start with Laura with a couple questions.
um laura does um do do taller trees necessarily mean more beneficial effects to neighboring
residents or to the health of the overall um tree environment i'm gonna object because it's
it's a vague question as to what more beneficial means okay i'll be more specific laura do taller
trees necessarily mean more benefits to neighbors in terms of cooling, light, or air than trees that
may be smaller. Less tall, that is. Tall is one important consideration, species is another.
If you're talking about, in my professional opinion, if you're talking about benefit,
Not all species are equal. Native species which have better habitat value as food source and as
nesting sites, feeding sites for native birds, for insects which support native songbirds
are also important. And the third component is healthy. So if I had a choice of two trees,
tall would be one consideration, but species and health would also be in the mix.
In your professional opinion, is the arboreal environment that would be created by the completion of the proposed development, is that healthier along the lines of the same factors you just testified to, nothing else?
Is the proposed environment healthier than the environment that exists currently?
I'm going to object because the only health that you testified to was whether there were healthy trees or not healthy trees.
But what you mean by health, if it's beyond whether the trees are healthy or not, I'm objecting because that's not part of her testimony.
And I don't think she has any kind of an expertise.
We're going to answer that. Can you answer that?
Are you able to answer that?
Yes. It's always hard to lose trees.
It's always hard. We love our trees.
I understand that.
It is important that the trees we have are, I'd like to have a lot of as many trees as we can.
are, I'd like to have a lot of as many trees as we can. I'd like to have them be native species.
I would like to have them be healthy.
All of these things are important. Are any of the, are any of the trees that are being removed
from the property unhealthy or of invasive species? And are they being replaced by healthy
trees that are of native species? I'm going to object to this a compound question and it's better
if you could if you could separate it as to invasive and healthy as separate. Make the two
questions Rachel. Yes. Laura can you answer the first part of the question which is are we
removing trees from the site in the area near the co-op that are unhealthy or not native species?
We are removing trees which are not native.
Those include the sycamore maples, which are one of the two most predominant species on this site.
We are removing somewhat Norway maples.
So we're removing a mix of invasive and native species.
And we are separately removing some trees which are healthy and some trees which are not healthy.
and and Laura are we replacing those trees with native species and healthy trees
yes we're replacing the trees with a greater diversity of native species
and we're replacing them with trees which we believe to the best of our ability will be
healthy and thrive on this site and last question for Laura you mentioned in your
earlier testimony that there was an area on the site that we were not adding trees to that was
utilized by the community. If we were to utilize that space on the site for additional trees,
would that get us closer to the tree replacement requirements, albeit removing space that the
community has asked us to keep? That is correct. We deliberately made the decision not to plant
trees in the open grass area at the toe of the steep slope which is on this property but which
the community tells us they use because they told us that it was important to them as an open space
we could definitely have planted more trees and reforested if you like that open space
which would have gotten us closer to the required tree canopy replacement but which
I believe would have been a loss to the community. Thank you. Anything else for Laura? Laura and if
you can you can if you're not sure just tell us but using that community area that you just spoke
to um uh is it is it possible that that would have actually allowed us to comply with the zoning code
or in your opinion? I'm objecting to anything around code compliance that's a legal opinion
and she's not qualified for that she's qualified to answer questions related to tree replacement
and caliber inches as a relates that's her expertise we got okay go ahead that's my
question laura i mean do you know if what's your opinion on how likely we could have met the code
or if we still would have fallen short albeit been closer if we had used that community area
we would have gotten either very close or been able to comply with the required caliber inches
okay okay thank you um i i think that rachel wanted to um i just had one more question on
cross that came up um for recross so um you testified that you are replacing some unhealthy
trees with healthy trees and and with native trees but you agree don't you that the trees
you're replacing are going to be much shorter um than the ones that you then they're younger
that was from mr lubar she hasn't testified to it and i just want to get her testimony on the
record too that that's it that's a yes or no miss miss hand's point yes they are younger and
therefore shorter okay thank you so we we wanted to also call uh the engineer back uh miss poindexter
for just one or two questions for direct purposes sarah can you unmute yourself
i'm here thanks so as you saw mr masters was pointing to the top of the site that
is parallel to wayne avenue could you explain these site conditions and the elevation
change if there is one um which would on the top of the site
All right, Rachel, and you're saying top of the site, where do you mean?
um parallel to wayne avenue um between our property line where our property line starts behind the co-op
Um, parallel to Wayne Avenue, um, between our property line, where our property
need the exhibit up
um so at the at the um
there's an elevation drop from
a lot of
when there's steep floats
so there's about a 10 foot drop
in certain areas
but which
between which two points are you
describing?
Can you see the screen?
I can.
Sarah it would be between
the sort of the vertical
tree edge if you would on that
side of the site and I guess
the distance from there
to the edge of the
nearest edge of the co-op building do you know what that distance is so along along that northern
property line um adjacent to the co-op building there's a drop of um 10 feet maybe nine feet
nine to ten feet um it just goes across the site and then as you as you move from um let's see
north, I guess you can say northeast to south, there's a drop of, it varies across the site,
but it can be about 15 feet. So are you familiar with sort of how high off the ground at the co-op
edge the lowest residential windows are in that building? I'm going to object to relevance. What's
the point of these questions we're establishing the effect of the uh the uh tree cooling that you
uh developed uh during cross steve there isn't any testimony that tree cooling has to do with
certain heights of windows or steep slopes so can you put some foundation on the record first
because otherwise i'd have no idea what you're trying to prove that's what i'm attempting to do
here yeah it sounds okay you raised the issue steve on cooling yeah so uh i i don't i don't
know the elevation of the windows but this parcel is lower than the parcel to the north
based on the topography okay um so in in your opinion um is the um the folks who live on various
floors in the co-op building is it is it fair to say that depending on which floor they live on